


A Tuesday Kind of Love

by cashewdani



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Nostalgia, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-15 20:12:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1317715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He’s hungover and afternoon is hours away, and it’s too much, watching Harry be twenty all over the world.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the year was ours

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, my name is Dani, and I’m disgusting. Title from [this ThoughtCatalog](http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/i-want-a-tuesday-kind-of-love/).

**1. _the year was ours_**

It’s early, too early for a Sunday morning, but his phone won’t stop vibrating where he is apparently still holding it in his hand from last night.

He vaguely remembers dozing off to Alexa talking about Pizza Express, she was driving past one that didn’t used to be there, was that it?, but the details are as fuzzy as the inside of his mouth.

Nick’s aware that his New Year’s resolution is barely three weeks old and he swore he was going to stop getting pissed when he drank, he’s in his thirties now, but where’s the fun in being the first one home?

Maybe it’s in not having a fucking migraine along the whole right side of you body and most of the left.

“Whaaaaaaaa?” he yells at the phone, but the caller has long since hung up.

He tries to close his eyes and drift off back into pleasant unconsciousness where he’s unaware of all of his past mistakes but he’s too miserable.

The missed call was from a blocked number, lovely, but there’s a text from Harry also in his alerts.

 _check out twitter when you get a chance xx_ with an emoji of a video camera and a calendar besides it.

He does, and an hour ago Harry posted a Vimeo link with the summary, _a year in the making_. Nick clicks on it and the explanation as to what this is is spelled out on the screen in the same font as all those cats and cheeseburger pictures from ages ago, over a sunrise from Annie’s backyard. _Here’s the last year of my life, as captured in a few seconds a day. Welcome to the journey._

And then Nick can hear the opening bars of _Handwritten_ by Gaslight Anthem as a map comes into view, but this is some cover version he’s never come across before, and maybe it’s Harry, it could be.

But then it says January 14th and there’s a shot of Harry making eggs. The images flick by, intercut with arrows moving over the map, as Harry makes his way to LA, Jamaica, London. And Nick finds himself smiling, in spite of the headache, getting a glimpse into Harry’s past. But then he starts to notice something. How there’s little pieces of him scattered throughout even though he barely saw Harry this past year.

That’s the mug he gave him and Harry wearing his jumper and a bottle of Nick’s shampoo in Harry’s luggage as he packs for the US leg of the tour. A stupid vine Nick sent him and a mutt he got a text about that Harry had said made him miss Puppy and that shot that Nick knows is of his own garden. Harry showing off his birthday watch, shopping for the jacket he’d sent to Grimmy, an old mix Nick made him coming out the iHome on the tour bus.

It’s not all him, there’s everyone else they love there too. Lux blowing bubbles. Gemma riding a bicycle up ahead. Niall waggling his eyebrows and biting his lip. Alexa and Pixie dancing horribly in a car. Harry’s mum smearing jam on toast. Lou putting his hair in pigtails.

But Nick keeps seeing himself and he knows he’s self centered but it feels like it’s too much to be coincidence. Which makes him sigh, and hate himself, because when you’re looking for things is when you’re always going to find them.

He tries to turn off his inner monologue because Harry spent eons away from England in 2014, on stages and buses and planes. There’s the shots of the airports and the stadiums and the tourist traps to prove it. He was dating Kendall and busy all the time. And even when he’d had a moment, Nick himself had tried to be busy. To be at a distance and in control of himself. And yet that’s the plate that Nick keeps in his cupboard. That’s the park they ran the dog in. That’s the candy Harry sent back in a package.

He watches it again, immediately after it’s ended, and it’s maybe even worse the second time through, his mind sticking on the phrase _many years I’ve missed you_ like it’s the only sentence he’s ever heard. His heart feeling like the way they recommend you take asprin for so you make it to A &E before dropping dead.

He’s hungover and afternoon is hours away, and it’s too much, watching Harry be twenty all over the world.

As the arrows fly across the map, the ache in Nick’s chest spreads out, moving with them, because he was here, the whole time, while Harry wasn’t. And all those little things, the sunglasses he left in Harry’s car and his favorite wine on Harry’s table, they’re just things. They’re not like he’s actually there.

Nick presses play one more time, he’s disgusting, but also, he really liked that “Riptide” song, the second track, last winter when he’d listened to it a lot. And did that mean something too, that it was the song playing in the kitchen on repeat one while Harry had moved garlic around in a pan dancing a little, holding a spatula?

He doesn’t close the tab, maybe he’ll watch again later, but he feels like he has to talk this out. Even though calling Harry always feels now like he’s cheating on a diet. Like someone should give him a talking to about being naughty.

Harry answers on the first ring, spilling out, “So what did you think of it?” in lieu of a greeting, and Nick acknowledges the familiar mix of fondness and unease that his voice always sets off in him.

“Think you had quite the year, popstar.”

He asks, “Anything stand out to you?” and it’s not just the hangover that makes Nick mouth go dry.

“You have to get better taste for background tracks. I mean, did you just take that first one off some kid’s Youtube page?” Nick says, trying to be light. Trying not to ask whether Harry wore that blue t-shirt Nick had thought he’d lost on August 14th on purpose.

“Well, I had another one in mind…” Harry starts, but Nick can’t right now. Like an addict, a little is never enough, and yet he keeps trying to find that balance. Harry in his life but not his whole life. Because that option has never been on the table.

“No, it’s good. It was really good. You’re living the life. But I should go, Puppy wants out for a wee and I’ve got breakfast with Collette,” he says as a lie. 

“Oh, yeah, no, have fun,” and Nick can hear the disappointment in Harry’s voice, clear as the vodka it’s going to take Nick to forget this conversation. “Say hello.”

“Always.” And Nick wants to say talk soon, see you, we should make plans, but can only allow himself the simplest, “Bye.”

He watches the video once more after Harry’s said the same.

\---

They obviously make him talk about it on the morning show the next day and he was prepared but he still goes home with a headache.

Maybe it has nothing to do with Harry, maybe he just has a brain tumor.

He takes some Nurofen and goes to lie down on the sofa, facing the back, the best place to sulk in his house as determined by many hours of research.

Collette had come round yesterday after his breakfast of coffee, painkillers and the half a slice of toast he’d made himself choke down, because he hadn’t wanted to be a total liar and because she’s really a good friend.

She still lets him complain about how it’s hard, how it’s not fair, how he wishes he could just turn himself off sometimes and move on like she hasn’t been hearing it for years. “The only way out is through,” she says and sometimes he sighs and sometimes he scoffs and sometimes he sniffles about it, or some combination of the three.

He’d heard once, from someone at a party or in an interview, he doesn’t really remember, that it takes the length of a relationship to start getting over it. A statistic that hadn’t seemed horrific at the time when he’d had no relationships he wanted to recover from. Just a fact he’d heard and filed away in the back of his mind. Until it tumbled out from the folds of his cranium after a bottle and a half of Cab Sauv while Harry had been on the other side of the ocean, having spent the afternoon with sea lions and Swift.

He’d brushed it off, finished that second bottle like a champ and invited Harry for a roast dinner once Taylor was out of the UK. He came round on Christmas and Nick tried not to blow it out of proportion, how it had become a tradition, then. How Harry had had a girlfriend but was in Nick’s kitchen, still. How he just likes the way Harry’s laugh had sounded against the walls of his house, always.

It had been the holidays and everyone’s a little bit sap then, too full of booze and cream and sugar, feeling sluggish and maudlin and happy all at the same time. He’d watched Aimee and Harry dance around, paper crowns at ridiculous angles in both their hair, and had thought about how 2012 had been a good year. How he wouldn’t have minded another one quite like it.

He hadn’t talked about Harry in Puerto Rico, at least not in the way that he’d wanted to. He had a lot of cocktails and got a sunburn and tried not to think about how the itch of missing Harry was worse than the one on his skin.

And some sick part of him, the one that used to make him throw tantrums when his mother would take him into a shop or talk about his mates behind their backs, actually crowed when Harry texted him that things with Taylor had gone belly up. He knows Harry had really liked her, admired her and found her pretty and probably was a little bit, if not fully, in love. And so he’d sent his apologies, like that somehow made up for being a piece of shit deep down, and said lunch was on him as soon as Harry made it back home.

They had had sushi and Harry had smiled over his plate of assorted fish maki and Nick had taken too much pride in how Harry seemed happy now, sitting across from him. How Nick looked much worse day to day, wrung out on emotions like a fucking teenager.

He’d forgotten again about that stupid, probably made up, statement about getting over a person taking all the days you knew them, because there was planning Harry’s birthday and having him over for stupid reasons and parties and the way that Harry always liked to press him against the door once they’d closed it, kissing him with a mouth hot and wet and open. Making Nick feel like maybe his wishes for 2013 were coming true. Like Harry wasn’t a thing he was ever going to have to get over.

But then there was the tour, the time differences and only seeing Harry’s face on a screen, and it came a little more into focus all the time that his relationship with Harry was mostly in his own head. There were a lot of nights that he wound up staring at his ceiling thinking about the Call and Delete prank, _so I think I’m falling in love with him_ , and how even at the time it had kind of made Nick feel like those dreams you have where you’re naked at graduation. Exposed, like everyone was looking at him, like there was no way to hide the stuff making him up.

Nick had gone to the fashion shows with Harry, out to meals, dos their friends were throwing, the days always adding up, Harry constantly doing things that make Nick want to have a little more room for his emotions inside his ribcage.

When Kendall had been mentioned for the first time, Nick had already seen the look in Harry’s eyes, knew where this was headed. He’d stocked up on wine and biscuits and willed himself to be fine with it. Swore he wasn’t going to be a mess. And ended up moaning to all of his friends one night about how it wasn’t fair that Harry had gone to see _Perks of Being a Wallflower_ with him because all he can do is feel like such a Patrick. The next morning he’d puked twice and apologized profusely for being a twat who still couldn’t hold his liquor.

Poppy’s hen was the date he would have circled on his calendar if he still happened to have a calendar you could write on. Or probably, more accurately, drawn a tombstone on. Because holding onto Harry that night, Harry with his girlfriend in America, Harry with his upcoming tour and press and plans for Christmas that didn’t include Nick, he knows he can’t do this any more.

He’d started to count the days after everyone had gone and his place was empty, but there were too many. Harry always there, even when he wasn’t. The way that Nick could still smell him on his pillowcase as the years added up, stretching ahead of him, too many weeks to wait until maybe he can start talking about his feelings in the past tense.

And Nick had to adjust the total each time Harry would be at an event. Each time he’d texted Nick, asking about his day. Whenever he’d suggested a meal or a quiet night in or a vacation, Nick thinks of those hours added on to the grand total.

And so Nick had stated to be conveniently out of town. Busy with work. Had asked their friends to make plans around them, like they were divorced people or kids at uni after a one night stand gone south. And then Harry had been all over the world again and it didn’t so much matter if Nick was around or not. It had been nice not to lie as often, to not have to be faced with his detox and push for sobriety in such an in your face way, if nice is the way to describe it.

He’s still got ages ahead of him, miles to go before he sleeps, but he tries to close his eyes against the afternoon light in the living room. Isn’t shocked at all to see flashes from Harry’s 2014 there, adding the minutes on by rote at this point.

\---

“You’ve got a special caller on the line,” Fincham tells him, and Nick doesn’t like the look of his face. It’s never good when Matt’s enjoying himself.

“Oh, do I now, Finchy? Didn’t think that my mother could be bothered to call in on a Tuesday. She’s got her bridge group coming round at noon and all.”

Matt just smirks and hits the switch to take the caller live. “Why don’t you tell Grimmy good morning, caller.”

“Hiiiiiiiiiii!” he hears coming in his headphones, Harry’s voice drawn out and familiar, as everyone else in the studio starts clapping and hooting and making general right arseholes out of themselves.

“Britain, Harry Styles has phoned us in this morning!” Finchy explains, in case there’s anyone who could possibly be a regular listener to their show and not know exactly what’s happening. “How you doing?” he asks, when Nick just sits there, stewing, quite happy the cameras are not on at this particular moment.

Harry answers, “I’m good,” and he does sound good. He does not sound at all like someone who Nick should be mad at it.

And, really, Nick shouldn’t be mad at him, it’s childish and ridiculous, and because of that and how he’s a presenter of live national radio, he makes himself say, “Good morning, Harold, pleasure to hear from you as always. To what do we owe the privilege of this phone call.”

“Well, Nicholas,” and Nick loves hearing Harry use his proper name like that, “I hear you were talking about me on the show yesterday.”

“Yes, the video!” Nick responds, all fake enthusiasm. “Got wind of that, did you?”

“We loved the video, Harry,” Fifi chimes in. “I’m honestly concerned about the play counts I might have added up.”

“But you did it all from one of our work stations, so everyone will probably just blame Grimmy,” Matt, helpful as always, responds.

Harry says, “Speaking of blaming Grimmy, I believe you said, ‘well, it’s been done before’, Nick. Is that true?”

“Where did you hear that from?” Nick asks back, shooting for a tone of teasing, hopefully making the mark. “You make it sound like I said it on a public broadcast!”

“My mum texted me,” he says with a laugh in his voice and Nick pictures Harry’s face, the grins and dimples and everything, Pavlovian.

“Oh, that Anne,” Nick answers, taking his phone out of his pocket and placing it on the desk because he’s sure there’s going to be a text for him as well in just a moment. “But, just what I meant by that is that, you know, lots of people make those videos. It’s not a bad thing, to be part of a trend.”

“Oh, I don’t think he did it for that,” Fiona says. “He’s not the type for that. But why did you, though, Harry? Breakfast show exclusive, come on.”

“Well, my sister had heard about the 100 Happy Days thing...”

“Hi, Gemma, if you’re listening!” Nick butts in, cutting Harry off, because he’s not entirely sure he wants to hear why Harry did this. “Anne too, I’m shocked you haven’t messaged me yet, actually.”

“ANYWAY,” Harry just starts talking over him, like they’re in the middle of telling a story in someone’s living room and not being broadcast to almost 7 million listeners. “She was doing that, and making me listen to how fulfilled it was making her feel as a person, but I realized that like, this is going to sound so cheesy, but it’s important. It is. Just to be appreciative and positive and take time to recognize the little and every day things that make up your life. And so that’s how it started, a thing for me, keeping track of, oh, that was a really good sandwich or how nice my flight took off on time. But then, in February, I don’t know, I kind of changed what I wanted to do with it.”

Nick remembers February. Well, parts of it more than others. Not helping Harry say goodbye to his teen years for good. Being mad at everyone at work for the flowers and the date setups and all of their stupid Cupid meddling. Attempting to prepare for what could happen at the Brits. 

But mostly, the way post Valentine’s, in that kind of sadness hangover that has only ever led to bad decisions, he’d told Harry to come round. To share the ride back to his. To just have full access to Nick’s heart that has no chance of making it out unscathed, actually more comfortable with an ache than anything else, familiar in some terrible way. 

And then more vivid than all the rest of it, the way he’d tried to hold himself together in the back of that cab just because Harry was there and Nick had missed him. 

He’d felt like the carbonation in a fizzy drink, just threatening to spread further and further out into the world until there was nothing left of him. Drunk on being potentially insubstantial. Harry there and laughing and there wasn’t really the flashbulbs going off, the people screaming, there was just that way that Harry was looking at him and Nick knowing this was the best and worst thing that was going to happen to him.

That stands out.

More than finding one of Harry’s stupid hair ties on his bathroom counter and touching it there, besides the soap pump, trying to decide if he’s strong enough to wear it on his own wrist amongst all the other bangles and bracelets. More than Harry’s voice on the phone the morning after the Brits, telling him he sounded awful. More than thinking of all the dates he’d like to have had the opportunity to take Harry on for Valentine’s Day.

That feeling of everything is better with you and nothing is worth anything when I’m not, it’s the clearest and the most in focus and Nick slips into that old emotional place like it’s a bed at the end of the long day and he’d never gotten around to making it that morning.

Matt asks, “So February was when you decided to eventually go public with it then?”

“Yeah, I guess, more or less. I just had something I had to say.”

“Oh, your mother’s texted!” Nick says, as his phone vibrates around on the counter, and always he’s so thankful for this woman. “She said I should make my own version for next year.”

“You’re already on your Instagram all the time, I don’t think that the country’s ready for more than that.” Fiona comments.

He goes with it, because it’s something that’s not about February or Harry or him being a sad sack on the way to a meltdown. “What are you saying, Fifi? I’ll have you know I get tons of likes. Tons. Thousands upon thousands of likes.”

“And he also wants you to know his handle is nicholasgrimshaw, please friend him, he’s desperate for your attention,” Matt adds. “But thank you, Harry, for taking the time to give us a call this morning, I know from Twitter that the nation is loving it.”

“No problem. Any opportunity to talk to Grimmy,” and Nick wonders if it’s a dig or he’s just taking it that way because he feels like the rawest nerve.

Fiona says, “And us too, I hope.”

“Of course, you and Matt and anyone else who happens to be in. I love you all.”

“Cheers, Harry,” Nick says, “But now, we’ve got to be turning over to the news.”

“Bye!” he chirps out, while Fiona is commenting on just how nice that was for him to call, and Nick is just glaring daggers at Matt as they flip over to the other desk.

He keeps his phone out, expecting a _how was that?_ text, but nothing comes.

\---

It’s not even noon and he feels like he’s lived three days already.

The whole ride home he’d been hearing Harry say _I love you_ minus the _all_ and it’s sick. He’s sick. It’s like every time he has a cigarette after the honest to God last time, he’s quitting right now. He can’t help himself and he’s back in old patterns without even realizing it.

When he opens the door to the flat, Puppy lifts her head from her spot on the entry rug, but makes no move to get out of his way. He scratches her behind the ears regardless, even if he’s sure one of these days stepping over her is going to break his neck.

And rounding the corner, shucking his bag and his coat in a pile that’s going to bother him later, he feels his blood surge hot and then icy. “What the…” he breathes out, startled, because Harry is sitting at his kitchen table with an untouched cup of tea in front of him, apparently already gone cold from the looks of it. He’s got on a Henley the color of oatmeal and a bright green beanie holding back his hair and Nick has to grab at his chest where his heart is beating overtime. “Shit! You scared me.” He tries to shake the rattle out of his voice by waving his hands around. “What are you doing here?”

“Why? Because you didn’t ask me round? Didn’t know I needed an invitation.” His voice sounds totally different than it did over the phone a few hours ago, all hard and without his usual lightness. He’s not even really looking at Nick, a quick glance up kind of through him or just over his shoulder at a spot on the opposite wall, and then he’s back to staring into the mug, tapping a ring against the ceramic.

“Well...no, you don’t,” Nick says, hesitantly, still standing in the doorway, not really sure what to make of anything that’s happened the past few days. Attempting to slow down his heart beat. “I just didn’t expect anyone.”

Harry turns so quickly to look at him that the chair screeches against the floor. “Did I do something?” 

His face is too sad, like Puppy’s when she’s been caught doing something she knows she’s not supposed to, and the way that Nick aches in all the parts of himself is a thing he never wants to feel again. 

“What?”

“Did I do something to you? Like, you have to tell me if I fucked up. Because I’ve been going over it and over it and I’m sorry if you telling me ruins it somehow, like I should know and be ready to apologize for it on my own, but I can’t figure out what I did that you can’t stand me any more.”

“What are you talking about?” Nick asks, distracted by the way Harry’s got a flush coming up on his throat, so pink under the three necklaces he’s got on today. The way Harry’s here in his kitchen at all.

“You don’t want to see me! I call you and you’re always busy, you’ve always got something on. I just…” he looks down at his lap then, embarrassed “This is stupid, sorry, I shouldn’t have come. It’s stupid. Clearly, if you don’t want to see me, the worst thing to do would be to come round. I’ll...” he looks at the mug, like he’s trying to decide if he should wash it out before leaving, and Nick can’t watch this.

“It’s not that I don’t want to see you,” he sighs out, slumping into the chair next to Harry’s. Nick always wants to see him. He wants to keep him, here in this kitchen, even if it has to be in this stupid sad argument forever.

“It really seems like it’s that.”

And Nick hasn’t even been able to put into words for himself what he feels like, what this is. Because it’s too big and too much and it’s not a possibility. It’s not real. Nick would know if it could be real. 

“I’m a really fucked up mess, Harry.”

Harry just sits there, waiting, as Nick tugs at his hair like it will make his headache go away. “That’s all you have to say? You’re a mess?”

Nick nods. “Guess so.”

“No. There’s an answer, or a reason, or something you’re not telling me. You don’t get to just say you’re a mess and end the discussion. You don’t get to end the discussion at all.”

“Is that so, popstar?” Nick chuckles, somehow, against all reason and the acrid feelings in his guts.

He spits out, “Don’t patronize me,” because Harry hates it when Nick acts like he’s older and Harry’s younger even if it’s true.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me!” Harry orders again. “You have to tell me!”

Nick looks away, at the empty biscuits package he hadn’t put in the bin last night, the almost afternoon light coming in the windows on it like it’s something special. He takes a breath and steels himself even though he knows none of it is going to help.

“I don’t want to be friends with you any more, Harry. If you want me to say it, I’m saying it.”

“Is this a fucking joke?”

Nick makes himself look at Harry’s face. At the angry spots of pink he’s got up on his cheeks, and the stubble he probably should have shaved this morning, and those eyes that Nick has never found the perfect paint chip for. Because he needs Harry to believe this. Because he’s a fucking grownup and that means not making the same mistakes over and over. 

“Does it seem like a joke?”

And Harry sputters a little then, like the realization is sinking in at the same time as he’s scrambling to remember if there’s a new pranks segment on the program. “You still didn’t tell me what I did!”

“You didn’t do anything,” Nick says, reaching out his hand towards Harry, because it’s hurting him too much to watch the confusion and angst play out across the table knowing he’s the cause of it.

“Don’t touch me!” Harry jerks his wrist away, upsetting some of the tea onto the table. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Okay. Sorry.” He sighs again, too tired for any of this. Wanting to go to bed and wake up in April or maybe three years ago. Three years ago would be nice. “For all of it.”

“Glad you’re sorry, you fucking piece of shit.” Harry gets up, pacing through the kitchen that somehow feels smaller than it ever has at any party. “How long would you have waited to say something if I didn’t pull it out of you?”

“I was just waiting for you to get the message.”

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Nick asks, getting annoyed under the exhaustion.

“Like I’m going to get into it now when clearly you’ve wanted me gone for ages.”

“Doesn’t matter what I want. You’re going out on the road again before you know it. Won’t even have to worry about turning on your radio and catching my voice there.”

“Too bad you’re still going to have to talk about me,” Harry says, and it’s a barb that latches and stings.

“I’ll make do.” He’s done it for ages already, old hat at this point.

Harry takes his hat off and scrubs the free hand through his hair. “How long, Nick?” he asks, and Nick doesn’t like that he can hear the choked up start of tears on the hard consonant ending of his name. “Just...you have to tell me.”

And Nick doesn’t know what to say because he never wanted to be Harry’s friend, always wanted something more. Friendship _and_. Inside jokes. The taste of a sternum. Permission to trace a tattoo. To take a nap on Sundays. To grow old with all those things as a constant.

“What do you think?” he tries to ask, quietly, like he cares about Harry’s opinion and isn’t just an asshole who can’t own up to anything.

“Nick,” he pleads, voice cracking, and Nick has never felt so cruel before. 

He can’t say anything, just watching Harry’s hand clench in the knitting of his hat until he says, firmly, “I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot and a child and not worthy of Nick Grimshaw’s magnificent friendship or what fucking ever, but I’m not a coward.”

“No, you’re not.” Nick feels the flush of shame under his skin, prickly and unpleasant.

“You didn’t throw me a birthday party!” Harry yells at him. “It’s been almost a year and I can’t believe I’m just saying this, but that fucking hurt. And it fucking hurt every time you screened my calls or had forgotten you’d made other plans or wouldn’t even want to talk to me at events. And I don’t care if this is hard for you, if you don’t like things that are messy, because this is fucking life. This is _my_ life! And you can’t even see how you’re affecting it!”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Not like you meant it.”

“Alright, Harry, fine, I’m sorry that I’m such a terrible, selfish person. I’m sorry that you ever had to get to know me at all.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t fucking make light of this.”

But Nick just keeps going. “I’m sorry I didn’t throw you a birthday party. I just figured your _girlfriend_ or your friends in _fucking LA_ would have taken care of it for you. Hell, you could have had parties anywhere in the world. Saw enough of that to be true on your fucking video.”

“Did you even watch it? Like, actually watch it and not just play it in the background?”

“I watched it!” Nick fires back. “I watched it because I can’t just keep up with you through Dailymail.co.uk!”

“You’re the one who was never around when I called!”

“Well, you were the one first,” Nick says, not even sure if it’s true, but a thing that he feels. That left behind loneliness.

“Is that what this is? That I was busy on tour?” Nick doesn’t blame him for sounding incredulous.

“You didn’t come round for Christmas!” Nick shouts out. And he was in Peru when Nick got food poisoning, and Dublin the night Puppy found all the glow worms in the garden and on a highway in America when Nick’s mother was in the hospital. “You weren’t there!”

“Fuck you, Nick,” he says, all on an exhale. “You can go the fuck to hell.”

And then he’s walking out of the kitchen, and even though Nick had told him to go, told him he doesn’t want to see him any more, everything in him twists up at the sight of Harry’s back silhouetted against the door frame.

“I didn’t mean...” he starts, having used the word sorry too much, scrambling out of the chair. “I told you I’m a mess.”

Harry’s already got his coat on, a black wool one that hung in Nick’s closet for an entire year, forgotten on one of those days in January where it’s inexplicably spring weeks ahead of schedule for nine bright hours. “Do you know on the drive over here, I was sure you were going to slap me upside the head and tell me I was mad for thinking anything was wrong. I thought maybe we’d make dinner, or have a pint or four in front of the telly, or watch Puppy outside before it got too cold to stand it. I thought it was all in my head. But I did not think I’d be walking out forever,”

Nick wants to take it all back, to suffer every moment after this one with the way Harry makes him feel so Harry doesn’t have to feel anything negative enough to make his face look the way it looks. But there’s nothing he can say.

Harry rubs a scuffed corner of his boot along an edge of carpet Puppy’s frayed, watching the threads move over the leather. “I lost the things I can’t. I got the anchor. I made the video. I don’t know.” He shrugs. “You ignored all of it.” And Nick is desperately trying to understand what Harry is saying, but all his brain is capable of thinking in its lovesick condition is how Harry must have done all those things for him. “But, I just kept trying. Until, I guess...now.”

Harry looks up then, right at Nick’s face and Nick feels himself nod a little, like he’s giving permission, like even his body unconsciously will always say yes to Harry Styles, even if it doesn’t know the question.

And then Harry is crossing the distance, putting both of his hands on the sides of Nick’s face and kissing him in a way that there are not words for. Like missing it made it better but also somehow exactly the same. Like the only thing they should be using their mouths for is showing affection. Like Harry loves him and also can’t say the words out loud and make them real.

Nick feels his dick filling out and tears pricking behind his eyes and Harry’s tongue right there against the roof of his mouth. He feels like he’s pouring his sadness into Harry and Harry’s injecting his own right back, and it’s too fucked up and tragic for him to take. He wants this so much. He wants exactly the opposite of this.

He groans, a noise that sounds like need and desire and pain all wrapped up together, and Harry just kisses him harder, still holding his jaw. Nick puts his hands inside Harry’s coat, on the warm litheness of his torso, but his fingers keep shaking like they’re cold.

And it’s too much once Harry’s touch slips lower, a finger catching in the collar of his jumper, the palm solid over his chest. He has to pull away but is too drunk on Harry’s exhales to get himself an actual safe mental health distance. Nick settles for resting his forehead on Harry’s shoulder which smells like winter and air on the verge of snow to turn everything white and clean and quiet. The position is awkward, but he still feels like he can breathe here, in this spot.

“What are we doing?” Nick asks, but Harry doesn’t answer. He just keeps skimming that hand up and down, each maneuver lower. When he finally strokes past Nick’s half hard erection, Nick is a little less concerned with having a conversation about it. He sucks a bruise onto Harry’s neck, right above the rough collar of the coat, and jolts himself with every twitch and jerk of Harry’s hips.

Everything feels slow, like they’re trapped in syrup, like he’s stuck in the way he told Harry his voice sounded the first night he’d blown him, right over there on the sofa. But if this is the last time, if this is going to be a thing they don’t talk about ever because they don’t even talk any more, Nick can’t do it in the sitting room. He grabs Harry’s belt loops and pulls in the direction of the hallway, Harry grunting a sound of satisfaction behind him.

Nick pushes Harry’s coat off as they enter the room, it puddling behind his feet and one of them is probably going to trip on it later, but that’s par for the course. Without the jacket, Nick can see more of his throat, and he traces the raspberry colored mark he’s already left there with the tip of his index finger. Watches the way that Harry’s body goes tense and taut under the pressure until Harry is roughly shoving him back towards the bed.

“Jumper off. Now,” he commands, and even though it’s a thing he does multiple times a day, Nick still struggles under Harry’s focussed gaze until Harry gives the back a hearty yank. He hears the static electricity whoosh through his hair, crackling in the room around them, but before he can worry about the state of his quiff, Harry is twisting his hand through it, biting at the hollow between Nick’s collarbones.

He gasps and stutters as Harry lowers him onto the duvet, clinging to his ribcage just to touch more of him. It’s the threatening to break apart into all the tiny molecules that put him together feeling from the cab in February except he knows this time he’s not going to be able to stay grounded to the Earth. That gravity is not even going to be a law.

Nick watches Harry pull off the Henley and throw it to the side, the muscles under his skin fluid and smooth. He’s tan for January, the swallows and butterfly and all the other assorted nonsense dark and bold and distracting. But once Nick notices the anchor on the forearm that he’s using to prop himself up, resting right next to Nick’s stomach, that’s the only one he wants to touch.

Before he gets the chance though, Harry’s leaning in a little closer, biting his lip and saying, “God, the whole bed smells like you,” and Nick needs a moment to both remember this forever and to get his body to perform all those tasks it’s supposed to do without any reminders.

He feels hot and like at any moment he’s going to start trembling and never stop.

Harry’s necklace clink against his own as he kisses him again, and gets a hand down to undo Nick’s flies but Nick stops being able to hear it. The only noise is his own panting and the blood rushing through his ears until Harry fully wraps his hand around Nick’s erection and he can hear every curse he’s ever learned try to escape onto Harry’s tongue.

He attempts to kiss Harry properly, but everything feels too heavy and weighed down and all he can do is wetly press his mouth against his. Harry’s lips seem to be equally affected once he shifts and gets himself more closely pressed up against Nick’s side with a hiss that sounds like it came up from his toes.

Nick knows he should be helping him, doing something, but his whole body feels pinned to the mattress, except for his crotch which jumps with every measured stroke of Harry’s hand. He’s moving faster now, his breath ragged on Nick’s neck and minutes ago they were fighting. Minutes ago he was convinced he’d be able to survive a world without Harry in it.

“I...” he begins. Repeating it when he’s not entirely sure he has the capacity to finish the sentence. But then Harry twists Nick’s dick, hard, moving the wet heat of his mouth to whispers into Nick’s ear, “Maybe I don’t want to be friends either,” and Nick’s hips are flying off the bed and he’s coming and coming, being pulled apart by that hand with the reminder of an anchor on it. He makes a sound like a sob. Harry coaxes him through it. Wipes him off with the jumper that Nick is never going to be able to wear again.

His vision hasn’t even really cleared but he’s pushing himself down Harry’s body, sucking and licking odd parts of him, a freckle, the left antennae, that spot next to his belly button that makes Harry shudder and whimper and look so fucking beautiful when Nick glances up at his face.

He shoves down Harry’s jeans and pants, just enough, and swallows him so quickly he chokes for a moment. Harry jerks and swears and tangles his hand in Nick’s hair, pulling in a way that almost makes Nick forget he’s already come. He scrapes with his teeth just a little, pushing down with his hands onto Harry like he needs to keep him here.

“I’m going, I’m going to, yeah, fuck,” Harry says, and Nick hollows his cheeks and swirls his tongue. At the last moment, pushes Harry further down his throat and swallows while Harry keens and says his name like a litany.

They both lie on the bed, spent, but eventually Nick feels like he has the strength for something other than barely staying alive. He reaches to outline the nautical shape over the bones in Harry’s wrist, still somewhat in awe. “Did you really do this for me?”

Harry nods, eyes closed, hair looking so dark against the whiteness of Nick’s sheets.

“Why?” Nick asks, because it seems impossible that anyone would do something like this for him.

“People do weird shit when they’re in love.”

And Nick knows he’s just had a come that could have quite literally broken his mind, but he’s still pretty sure Harry actually said that because Harry’s smiling and Harry doesn’t lie. “Like what exactly?”

He moves his free arm over his eyes, clearly a little shy about it. “Like film video clips every day for a year just to show someone else that they think about them all the time.”

“But you shared that with the whole world. That could have been anything.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t think it was anything. You thought it was something. And, maybe before when I said I wasn’t a coward, it was kind of a lie. Maybe I should have just made it for you. Maybe I should have said something in February. Maybe I should have said something the first time I thought it.”

“I still haven’t said it,” Nick says out loud, a realization. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I have always been a little bit in love with you.”

“And oblivious.”

Nick replies, “Yes,” because there’s no other alternative.

“I was going to use Ben Rector’s ‘When I’m With You’ for the first track but it seemed too obvious and like you’d get it immediately and think I was a fucking weirdo. But apparently I should have just used it because you’re an idiot.”

“Aw, but I’m your idiot.”

“Yeah,” Harry smiles at him. “And I’d like to be yours.”

There will be time for Nick to beat himself over the missed opportunities, the time and things he’s lost because he couldn’t feel worthy of them, but right now all he wants to do is kiss the inside of Harry’s palm. Revel in how he can add in all the seconds and minutes and years he wants. How he’s never going to have to get over this.


	2. held you tight, and the crowd sang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Because Harry’s leaving for Asia, the first trip since Nick was allowed to hold his hand out in the world, call him his boyfriend, fight with him every evening over who is going to clean up the dishes, and Nick feels like maybe having that day, that idea of what he thought being an adult would be like in sixth form, will help him get through it a little bit better._

**2. _held you tight, and the crowd sang_**

“Smile for the camera, Nicholas, because this footage is going to have to get me through too many weeks to think about and lots of hearing the other guys wank.”

Nick moans and turns his face as far into his pillow as he can, the drool spot he was apparently lying in on camera cold and rank against his mouth. “Does this have to be today?” he muffles out, and Harry laughs like it isn’t still dark and cold in the flat. Like he thinks Nick wants to hear about all of Harry’s bandmates spunking off alone in their bunks first thing.

“Come on, sunshine, let me see the happy, vibrant man who lights up the whole nation of Britain.”

Nick sighs and lifts his head to put on the most ridiculous expression he can manage, all teeth and scrunched up eyes. “How was that? Did it look like an emoji?” he asks, before flopping back down.

“So many emojis,” Harry says, and it makes absolutely no sense, but that’s maybe because it’s still too early.

“Why are you even awake, Styles?” because usually Nick has to look at Harry, all flailed out limbs and stuck up hair sprawled across his bed and somehow still get into the car and make it to the studio vaguely on time.

He answers “Yoga before rehearsal,” while kind of twisting Nick’s hair, lulling him back to sleep which is completely counter productive while he’s telling him, “You’ve got to get up for work.”

“Do I really have to?” Nick asks in a whine.

Every day for the past two weeks he’s thought about calling out. About making Harry play hooky as well, just spending all day in bed, eating jacket potatoes and dozing off after a mid-morning shag and having an actual crick in his spine the next day from too much languid laziness. 

Because Harry’s leaving for Asia, the first trip since Nick was allowed to hold his hand out in the world, call him his boyfriend, fight with him every evening over who is going to clean up the dishes, and Nick feels like maybe having that day, that idea of what he thought being an adult would be like in sixth form, will help him get through it a little bit better.

But every day he’s realized that they’re actual adults, with responsibilities and people counting on them, and it’s a handful of weeks apart from one another, they’ll be okay. They’ll be absolutely fine.

Except maybe Harry is filled with same nervous energy, the same thoughts about whether he’ll be able to sleep alone all of a sudden, if he’ll realize in the middle of the night some place that he’s lost a once ingrained life skill. Because he’s been nattering on for a long time now about how Nick has to make a video. How Nick has to take Harry’s phone with him one day and film it all, film everything, all that stupid, mundane stuff he gets up to, so that Harry can jump to it on the tour bus. _If it’s 9:14 in the morning in London and I’m in Singapore, what will Nick be doing?_ kind of thing.

And Nick wants to do it. He’s kind of mad he didn’t think of it himself actually, a nice unselfish thing to have given to Harry before he gets on a private jet five days from now. But filming it will make it real. And once it’s filmed and edited and put together, Harry’s going to take it, and he’s going to leave and then he’s just not going to be here any more.

Nick knew this was going to be a part of it, it’s always been a part of it, but he kind of wants to piss and moan about it for a really long time. Have a real proper strop with crying in the shower and drinking in the mornings and listening to “The Cure” a lot.

“This is just for you, right?” Nick asks, so he stops thinking about how skewed his iTunes play counts are about to get. “The video. It’s just for you?”

Harry bites his tongue a little then, the tip blunt and pink where it’s peeking out. “What are you asking me, Grimshaw?”

“Oh don’t look at me like I’m going to rub one out for you here on camera.”

“But why not, Grimmy?” Harry whines, dragging out all the words and it makes Nick laugh and miss him already in the same moment. And he must start looking at him too fondly, the way his mother looks at Nick when it’s getting close to the time to catch the train, because Harry says, "Go shower, I'll put the kettle on," pushing at Nick's shoulder. 

"Who's going to make me breakfast while you're away?" Nick asks, childishly, like he can’t wait to poke at this angsty bruise. Still lying flat on his stomach.

"The same person as always."

"So no one then?” He sticks out his lower lip, tasting the pillowcase, before lifting his head and saying, “Oh wait, no, Finchy, I’ll be fine."

“You’re going to be late!” Harry chastises, pressing with his feet against Nick’s thighs.

Nick just lets himself be shifted against the mattress, staying limp. “Are you sure you can’t get up more mornings with me? Annoying you is a great way to start my day.”

“Asshole,” Harry says, jabbing at his legs at least three more times before Nick sighs and rolls over while scrubbing at his face, facing the reality of his heels hitting the floor. It is a Tuesday morning and it’s time for work. It was time for work ten minutes ago if he’s being honest. 

By Monday, he’ll be waking up alone.

The shower takes too long to warm up, so he starts it out standing rigidly under the spray, feeling all his muscles go tense under goose pimpled skin. It’s almost tolerable by the time it comes to rinse out his hair. 

He’d used Harry’s conditioner purely by accident, Harry having rearranged everything on Sunday trying to put together a shopping list for his assistant. And Nick had made fun of him for being too good to go out and buy his own hair care products until Harry had tickled him breathless on the floor of the living room. Continued to not let him breathe, slipping a hand in past his flies. Nearly ruining the new carpet.

Nick leaves his pants undone, hanging off his hips, remembering it, while he starts to brush his teeth. He doesn’t bother with the shirt, he always ends up with Colgate somewhere, and plus his hair’s a limp, damp mess atop his head still. 

He hears the creak of the bedroom floorboards before he sees Harry, which makes sense with how his glasses are the slightest bit fogged up. Taking them off, he can see a clearer by the smallest of margins blur that seems to be Harry holding up his phone if Nick squints.

“Put them back on,” Harry requests, voice pitched low, and Nick acquiesces. “Pretend I’m not here.”

Staring at his soft around the edges reflection, scrubbed clean of all his details, Nick thinks about how that tone is going to make and ruin his whole day.

\---

He films it all in little Vine length bursts. Stirring the sugar into his coffee. Dancing with Fiona during _One Republic_ ’s newest single. The doodles he puts in the margins of a memo while sitting in a meeting.

It feels different, doing these things for an audience. For a purpose. Did his handwriting always look like this? Why is he spending so much time refreshing different social media apps one after another? Is that normal? How on Earth is Harry going to sit through this ridiculousness?

But Nick knows he’d watch Harry eat a bowl of cereal. Fall asleep in front of the TV. Stare slack jawed at Buzzfeed for hours. He’s done it already, each of those, and is going to miss them.

So he takes another 8 seconds of film, this time of him slipping on his headphones, fixing his hair, in case that’s a thing Harry’s going to want to watch even though he’s seen it infinite times before.

\---

“How long is this going to be?” Fincham asks him while they finalize the interview questions with Example for tomorrow and Nick has requested a shot of him looking super serious sitting at the main desk.

“The video? No idea.”

Handing the phone back, Matt says, “And am I going to find it on some preteen’s blog and have to talk to your publicist for more hours than I care to?”

“Come on, you love everyone at HJPR!” Nick answers, trying to make it a joke, but frankly, it’s a thing he’s been nervous about. He’s spoken way too much in his career about stuff leaking that wasn’t meant to leak.

“You still owe me for that time the two of you were caught snogging in the toilets at the O2.”

Nick ribs, “Which show?” and Fincham just sighs his exasperated with Grimmy sigh. “It’ll be fine, I promise you. We’re very discreet.”

“Except for all the evidence to the contrary.”

“Well, yeah, if you’re going to bring facts and history into it.” He smirks while Matt calls him a little shit.

\---

“What’s with all the sweets in the cupboard under the sink?” Nick asks, pulling out a bag of Twix Mix from behind the Vanish.

He can hear Harry stomping his way from the guest bedroom where he’s been trying to pack for a week and a half. Meaning, everything they own between them has been in that guest bedroom over the past nine days. “You weren’t supposed to find those, how did you find those?”

“Puppy weed about a bird in the garden, excuse me for wanting to clean it up. Are you having a binge?” There’s Maltesers and a handful of Aeros and a Dairy Milk Bliss he really could have used after that long phone call to his mother the other morning. “Or starting a Pick N Mix?” He tosses Harry a package of Jelly Babies that kind of just hits his chest as he rounds the corner.

“I was going to put it together, a piece of candy for every day I was going to be gone,” Harry says, disappointedly.

“Aw, an advent calendar for your arrival? Like you’re the son of Christ?” Nick says around a laugh, shooing Puppy away from the candy and cleaning supplies on the kitchen floor.

Harry massages at the back of his neck, looking sheepish. “Shut up.”

“Seriously though, it’s sweet.” Nick tries to catch Harry around the ankle with his foot, but Harry keeps backing away. “You’re sweet.” And he is. Harry is thoughtful and sentimental and makes Nick feel like he’s crap at all the parts of being a boyfriend that aren’t just loving Harry. “I’ll eat it. I’ll eat every last piece of it.”

Harry walks a few steps closer, lets Nick’s instep make contact with his shin, but is still looking down. “No, it’s dumb.”

“I’m dumb,” Nick says, seriously, and he can tell that Harry’s smiling behind all that hair he’s hiding in. “I’m dumb and I’ll help with the packing and add a little extra to the video tonight and anything else. You’re the dearest thing. Please come closer.”

Harry flops himself down on the tile floor, still far enough away that Nick has to reach out with his arm to grab a hold of Harry’s black t-shirt and get the angle right for a kiss to his forehead. “Bet you had a poem to go with each of them too, didn’t you?”

Harry laughs in spite of himself, pushing at Nick like they’re in a tickle fight, but Nick’s grip keeping their faces close together regardless. “While Thailand _Revels_ over “Story of My Life”, enjoy a handful of these.”

“Some _Galaxy Minstrels_ until your Minstrel gets back.” Nick answers.

Harry says, “I’d _Wispa Duo_ of things into your ear,” like it’s a sentence that makes sense, but even if it isn’t, it makes Nick’s breath change just a little. “I can’t believe I bought so much.”

Nick looks at the candy strewn around the floor. “Yeah, what were you going to do, come home to me weighing 16 stone?”

“That way I could have all your clothes,” and it’s Nick’s turn to shove at him a little.

“I know you’re already trying it. You better leave the Yves jumper, I’ve warned you.”

“Who can keep track,” Harry says, his face devilish, and if he thinks Nick won’t tear through those two suitcases again, he’s definitely mistaken.

But Harry’s taking out his phone, angling it to take a picture of their legs and a chocolate factory’s worth of sweets. Puppy’s butt is probably in the shot from where she’s still sniffing at the _Cadbury Flake_ , just waiting for them to leave the room so she can have a very expensive vet visit in her future.

Nick hears his phone buzz on the counter but it’s too far to check. “What’d you caption it?”

“Someone found the secret stash hashtag 16 stone.” Harry can’t stop laughing. Even after Nick tackles him and Puppy won’t quit barking.

Not even with Nick’s tongue in his mouth and hand down his trackies.

\---

Gemma had come for dinner, bringing Tesco Melting Middle Sponge Puddings to help with the 16 stone and three bottles of pretty cheap red to help with Harry leaving.

Some old mix of Nick’s, possibly resurrected from when he’d first moved to London by Aimee and her penchant for uploading unlabeled CDs to his iTunes account while he’s in the shower, is playing in the living room, Outkast telling them to shake it like a polaroid picture from over a decade in the past. He can hear the siblings giggling, the sound of a lamp being jostled, and their not quiet at all shushing of the lamp in question, even with the tap running.

He hits the little red record button on the screen of the phone, leaving a water stain, to capture his hands running a sponge over the plate Lux made for Harry last Christmas.

“Grimmy, get your ass in here,” Gemma yells. “He’s threatening to dance on the coffee table!”

“Seen it more than once, love,” Nick shouts back. “Bought the t-shirt and everything.”

“Oh my God, is that why this table is different?” she gasps and all those rooms over, Nick can still feel Harry’s laugh make the hairs on his arms stand up.

He turns off the recording, loading the rest of the stuff into the dishwasher. While pouring in the Finish, he makes a mental note to schedule some more dinners out in the weeks ahead. Maybe Fearne or Pixie or Billy will be around.

Someone has to be, even if Harry’s not.

\---

He captures taking out his contacts and setting his alarms, but he just lets himself enjoy the way that Harry scratches against his scalp while reading something on his iPad.

Nick falls asleep more quickly than he’d like.

\---

The next few days fly, Nick working on the video in the afternoons before Harry comes home, trying to put on a smile and silliness once he walks in the door even though Nick can already see how tired his popstar is.

“They have a lot of press scheduled?” Nick asks him, rubbing at Harry’s shoulders where he’s sitting between his legs on the floor. _EastEnders_ is on the telly, but so quietly he has no idea why they’re even watching it.

Harry says, “I promise not to cheat with any of the DJs abroad, Nicholas,” with his eyes closed, neck lolling between Nick’s palms.

And he’ll only get mad if Nick tells him he has to make sure to sleep enough and not push himself too hard because, “Come on, Grimmy, there’s tons of Sinagpore to check out!” so Nick let’s their conversation go silent enough to hear that someone on the show is pregnant but doesn’t know who the father is.

“Did you finish your editing today?” Harry asks when they cut to a commercial.

Nick’s so sick of staring at his own face that he has no idea how Harry looks at it day in and day out. “Almost.”

“I need it soon,” Harry reminds, like Nick could possibly forget.

“Just watch the show and relax. Don’t worry about whether I can meet a deadline.”

The news starts up and Harry keeps saying he’s fine between yawns and Nick lets him lie because it’s what Harry wants.

\---

“Do we have to go?” Nick whines from the edge of the bed. He’s been staring at his boots on the floor for five minutes and just doesn’t want to put them on.

“You’re the one that told Alexa it was a lovely idea for her to have this going away do.”

“Yeah, but that was ages ago before I realized we’d have to spend our last full day together with a whole bunch of people.”

“A whole bunch of our friends, Grim,” Harry reminds from in front of the mirror, trying to get his hair some way it’s refusing to go. Lou just trimmed it yesterday and he can tell Harry hates it a little.

But Nick’s feeling selfish and sulky and not like sipping cocktails at four in the afternoon on a Saturday. “I can’t believe you made us get out of bed.”

Harry reminds, “To be fair, Puppy made us get out of bed.” He taps at Nick’s knee. “Come on, we’re already probably going to be late.”

Nick groans, but puts on his shoes. “An hour, tops, that’s how long we’re staying.”

\---

It’s half two and Alexa’s got a bass line thumping so loudly he has no idea how she even has neighbors left.

Harry and Henry are talking over in the corner, while Nick watches from the new sofa Alexa made him help her pick out. He’s got his shirt undone at the throat and a very watered down at this point G&T in his hand.

“You’re going to be okay,” Pixie says and he barely hears her even though it’s directly in his ear.

“I know,” Nick sighs. “It’s just going to suck.”

“Well, yeah, probably.”

Harry looks over and smiles at him, that smile that Nick has claimed for himself, that he lets warm him from his face all the way down to the soles of his feet, that he knows he’ll be able to conjure in his mind tomorrow and the next day and the one after that, even if Harry’s on the other side of the world.

Nick waves and the smile turns into an honest to God beam. He barely notices Pixie elbowing him in the side. “Oh yeah, you’re fucking done for, as if we didn’t already know.”

He forces himself off the couch, leaving the drink and it’s basically disintegrated napkin on a coaster. “Dance with me,” he says to Harry when he’s crossed the room and knows he can be heard over the music.

“To this?” Harry asks, and yes, it’s some shitty house song that Nick has never liked at any of the clubs they’ve ever gone to, but he just wants an excuse to be close to him.

Nick ribs, “Come on, what are you? Scared?” and Harry is immediately pulling Nick’s hand, taking him to an open area of carpet by where the crisps had been four hours in the past. He gets his arms up in the air, the blood in his face hot and pumping, as Harry laughs and angles their bodies together. Like they’re the only two of them in the room. Like they’re the only two people anywhere.

\---

The time between when Nick called the cab and it arrived was too long, filled with everyone hugging and getting tears in their eyes and saying goodbye, but it was nothing compared to the length of the ride back to theirs.

Nick is scared to let any part of him touch Harry, lest they wind up on the cover of Ok! in some extremely compromising position. If he starts touching him, he’s never going to be able to stop.

Which is why he almost forgets to pay their driver, because Harry slips his palm flush against Nick’s, the touch warm and dry and familiar, and all he can focus on is interlocking their fingers.

Nick was sure all night at the party, and all day leading up to it, that once he got home, he was just going to tear Harry’s clothes off and fuck him on every surface in the house. Some of them twice, for good measure.

But once he gets the door open on attempt number three, hand shaking without Harry’s to hold onto, everything is very domestic and routine. Harry goes to let Puppy out in the garden while Nick turns off some lights and others on. He pours a tall glass of water and then a smaller one, knowing Harry prefers the tumblers.

Puppy comes barreling back in right when Nick’s finished adjusting the thermostat. “You ready for bed?” Harry asks in a quiet voice and Nick just nods. He reaches for Harry’s hand again, even though it makes him feel slightly like a child.

They brush their teeth side by side, alternating spitting in the sink. And while Harry sets the alarms, Nick spends much longer than usual putting moisturizer on under his eyes.

The lights are off in the bedroom when he comes in, but he can still make out Harry under the duvet on his side of the bed as he slips under.

“Hi,” Nick whispers into the darkness and Harry reaches out to touch the curve of his ear without saying anything.

And Nick can’t not kiss him any more. 

Harry tastes like the tube of Colgate they’ve had in the bathroom for a month and a half. His mouth is warm and the arch of his tongue is familiar and tomorrow Nick’s going to have to buy new toothpaste.

He makes a sound, this sad sound he’s been carrying around in his chest for weeks now, and Harry pulls back to stroke his cheek with his thumb. To shush him with a reminder, “None of that now, I’m still here.”

So Nick sighs and kisses him again. Wills his mind to go blank. Closes his eyes even though he wants to look at Harry forever.

It’s slow, and Nick can’t figure out if that’s because they’re tired or trying to make it last or some combination of the two. It makes Nick feel young, like he’s fumbling after a party, unsure of how far exactly this is allowed to go, concerned he might just fall asleep before it gets much of anywhere.

Part of him wants to. Just drift off kissing Harry like it’s any Saturday. Like they have all of tomorrow to catch up on the rest of it while the sun is already high and bright through the bedroom curtains as Harry arches and cries out and comes. Like he’s not going to have to look back on tonight as a touchstone, the last time he felt him like this.

But then Harry whimpers, stuttering his hips against Nick and if this is going to be the moment he remembers for weeks on end, he’s going to make it worth it.

He reaches for the nightstand, finding the nearly empty box of Billy Boys and lube right at the front of the drawer. “Yeah?” he asks Harry before tearing open the package and Harry nods and licks his lips before glancing away.

There’s the regular routine of it then. Slipping Harry’s trackies and pants lower while trailing his mouth over newly exposed skin. Sucking on Harry’s dick until he’s mewling and hot, getting him ready. Shucking the condom wrapper to the floor where Puppy will probably unearth it in front of guests, so Nick can roll it on and slick himself up, the whole time watching Harry’s eyes be hungry and dark and the most want filled thing he’s ever seen.

And then Nick is inside of him and this is the only part that shifts and changes each time. That strikes him with a feeling of newness and discovery and a little jolt of once denied gratification. He shifts the angle, closing his eyes, and letting Harry’s knees pull themselves a little closer to his own chest. Feels himself sink a little deeper. Come a little more undone.

When he opens his eyes with a snap at the sudden tightness of Harry’s grip on his forearm, he goes stock still, asking, “Hey, hey, you alright, love?” because Harry has tears on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose and caught on those pretty eyelashes and Nick put them there. “Does it hurt? I’m sorry,” he apologies automatic.

“It doesn’t hurt. All the rest of it hurts. It’s not enough,” he says, through a watery breath, and Nick’s heart is breaking, right here in this moment.

“What’s not enough?” Nick asks, even though he’s sure it’s him, what they have put together in such a fragile way not strong enough to survive even this smallest hiccup of distance and time.

“The video and calling and Skype it’s not...it’s not going to be enough.” And Harry’s just on the verge of hysterical, his breath going too fast and Nick’s still there inside him, panic bleeding into all the parts of himself he’s already missing Harry in.

“It’s going to be enough. We’re enough,” Nick reassures. Himself or Harry, he’s not entirely sure.

Harry pitifully says, “I don’t want to go,” lip trembling and eyes scrunched up, and Nick wishes there was some way to pull him closer even though there’s almost nowhere they aren’t touching. That he could tuck Harry in a little corner or nook of himself, making the space behind his spleen the most romantic and love filled place the world had ever seen.

“You want to go. You’re amazing and everyone loves you.”

“I love you,” Harry says, putting emphasis on every word through a tense jaw and Nick was right to think he was never going to survive Harry leaving.

He can’t say it back, not while he feels like he’s adrift in the sea with the tiniest of cuts all over his skin. He kisses Harry instead, gently, the taste of salt in his mouth making the ocean metaphor all the more tangible. 

Nick rocks into Harry, slow and easy, a raft on the surf, so far from land, trying to find something to hold onto.

But then Harry is shuddering again, and he hasn’t come, his cock still full there between their bodies. And Nick goes to pull out, to just spoon Harry against him because it’s the middle of the night and there’s only a few hours left, and it’s okay if this is all that it is. But Harry grabs at him, Harry groans and hitches a breath three times over, and finally requests, “No, harder.”

Nick can’t keep the pity off his face, the ache spreading from right below his ribcage to every single drop of blood that passes through his heart.

“Make me feel it. I need...I need to feel you.”

The tears are in his own eyes and his throat, and Harry was right that all of it hurts. He thinks about how they’re drowning in it, here in their bed, the place that’s supposed to be so much more solid than a shoreline.

He makes himself press down. Feel the bones of Harry’s legs dig into his chest. His own fingers sink into Harry’s skin like feet in the sand until they can go no further, despite how much he wants them to. He slams his hips forward and each time their bodies make contact, they both cry out and Nick can’t even distinguish the motivation any more.

He looks at Harry through his blurry eyes and thinks. _Remember me on the plane. Remember me on stage and in bed at night, remember me always. I want to be on your mind. I never want you to forget me._

And then Harry is calling his name, drawing out the syllables of that first before the word fuck, and Nick mentally snapshots the shape of his mouth, the wetness over the pink of his cheeks, the way bliss looks so much like pain, and goes somewhere deep inside himself as he comes.

He feels wrung out and sore as he chucks the condom in the bin, but still clings to Harry immediately once the act is done. Breathing in the back of his neck, not caring at all that in the morning he’s going to have a crick and be really in need of a shower. 

Nick says he loves him, at least six times, into the shell of his ear, before Harry’s body goes loose and heavy and then Nick says it another five, just in case.

\---

Puppy howls just after dawn, and no matter how many socks and pillows Nick throws at her, she won’t stop. When he sits up, he sees she’s whimpering at the overnight bag near the door, and he can’t say he really blames her.

“I got it,” Nick says, playing with Harry’s hair before snapping his fingers at the dog so she’ll follow him. He brews a pretty weak cup of tea, too impatient to let the bag sit for as long as he should, and then takes the dog into the garden. It’s still chilly out, despite the mug and the sweatshirt of Harry’s he’d left on a kitchen chair and the date on the calendar. He lets Puppy chase a squirrel for a little bit but then beckons her inside with the promise of treats and a belly rub.

Harry’s on the sofa, face down and pointing the remote at the telly even though he’s got his eyes closed. “Will you make me eggs?” he mumbles out and Nick feels a bubble of fondness burst inside of him.

“I’ll make you a full fry up if you want. Proper British send off.”

“Just eggs,” Harry says with a happy sort of smile as Puppy comes to rub along his arm that’s hanging off the couch.

Nick puts the kettle back on, and cracks the eggs into a bowl, whisking the yolks and whites together like they were never separate.

Harry’s asking Puppy what she thinks about this situation in Syria the BBC is reporting on but she doesn’t bark a response.

The clock says it’s 5:27 and the car’s coming at half nine. The math’s not hard, Nick just doesn’t want to do it.

\---

They’ve moved the bags to the front hallway between the two of them and Puppy running underfoot, in case her whining with her tail between her legs could encourage whoever is leaving to stay. Nick kind of wishes he had a tail to express the same sentiment.

Paul’s already called to say they’re on the way, not far now, especially at this time of morning, but Nick still hasn’t decided what kind of goodbye he wants this to be. And it’s funny because he’s always known the things he’s wanted and done everything to get them to be that way, except when it comes to Harry.

Still, even, after all this time, having things with Harry seems like too big a concept to ponder over, forget about dream about.

The way that Nick adjusts Harry’s shirt collar makes him say, “I’m not going off to war, you know.”

“A bunch of crazed fans though might honestly be more dangerous for you.” Harry scoffs like it isn’t sort of the truth. “You’ve got everything?”

“Passport, tickets, gum,” he smiles. “Phone.”

“Speaking of, Harry, if you lose this phone...” Nick says, feeling the blush come up the back of his neck and to the tips of his ears, having to look away from where he’s still rubbing the flannel Harry’s got on that Nick definitely wore three days ago.

“You didn’t!” Harry gasps.

Nick scrubs at his face, uncomfortable. “Just make sure the first time you watch you’ve got headphones in and no minors present.”

“I love you,” Harry says, smacking a wet kiss onto his cheek, his carry on hitting Nick against the thighs. “Is it good? Like how dirty is it?”

“I don’t know, you’ll have to report back with a review.”

“Did you put music into it? Like a really old 70s porno tracks? Or, oh, something with a saxophone? What about Miguel?!” Harry’s lit up like Christmas and Nick’s happy he did it. Probably could still be happy even if the video winds up leaked all over the internet and he has to never speak to either of his parents ever again.

“You’ll just have to wait and see.”

And then Harry’s phone is ringing with notification that the black Suburban is out by the kerb, and yes, there’s a few photographers milling about, just so he’s aware.

Nick makes him put the bag down so he can really hug him. He smells his neck, like last night, except now Harry smells like a shower and cologne and going out to face the world. He doesn’t smell like sweat and sleep and sadness.

“When you come back, you’re going to be exhausted and stink like an aeroplane,” Nick mouths against his skin.

“When I come back, you’re going to be here,” Harry says, and Nick has to push at his shoulder and hand him the strap of a suitcase because it’s all getting to be too much.

Harry kisses him the same kiss as he does in the mornings when he’s awake and Nick’s heading out to work. And there’s comfort in that. That all Harry’s doing is heading out to work.

He waves as Harry climbs the stairs and hands off his luggage and then watches the street long after the car’s pulled away.

\---

There’s a letter Nick finds on his pillow when he goes to strip the bed and wash the sheets.

Or not so much a letter, but something Harry had scrawled on the pad of paper from The Four Seasons that Nick stole and keeps on his nightstand for writing down weird dreams to talk about later on air.

_You found out about the candy and Tumblr will provide you with more pictures and videos than any one person probably needs. But I just had to say that I know how hard this must be. Thank you. Thank you always and forever for all the things you won’t let me apologize for. Love, H_

And Nick has to cover his mouth with his hand as he reads it through another three times.

Then he tears it off, carefully at the top, so there’s no unevenness to the edge. He props it up on Harry’s dresser, against the lamp with one of the watches Nick hopes he intended to leave behind.

He writes out his own shaky _You’re welcome_ on the underlying sheet and posts it to Instagram.

It gets a disgusting number of likes, considering it’s entirely out of context for everyone, but the only red heart that Nick cares about is the one Harry sends him in a text.


	3. felt alive, for the first time in my life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Babies love him,” Nick says, fondly, tightening his grip on Harry for just a moment. “Even the unborn ones.”_
> 
>  
> 
> _“Are you two thinking about having one any time soon? You know, settling down? Tying the knot?” one of the cousins asks and Nick feels terrible and then even worse when he sees the look on Fiona’s face._
> 
> _“Di,” she hisses followed by, “I’m sorry,” to Nick and Harry before turning her full hormonal fury back on her relative. “Are you drunk? You can’t just ask people things like that! Your mother would kill you if she were here. I might kill you!”_
> 
> _Diana at least has the decency to hang her head and Nick just tries to keep his face placid._
> 
> _Which isn’t easy when Harry smiles, easily even, saying, “Nah, it’s okay. I mean, we’ve barely even been together a year, so, marriage and babies hasn’t really come up.”_
> 
> _Except Nick knows that it has._

_**3\. felt alive, for the first time in my life** _

Fifi announces she’s pregnant at one of their Wednesday meetings, but Nick’s been suspicious for awhile now. No grown person drinks milk in the morning with that much regularity unless all other breakfast drinks are currently off the menu.

Nick says, after he’s hugged her twice, “You’re having a do. A nice affair with finger sandwiches and stupid games with nappies and everyone showering you and this little one to be with affection.”

“So, a shower,” Matt specifies. “You want to throw her a shower.”

“Well, yeah, who else is going to do it?”

Matt questions, “Her family?” and Nick notices how Fiona smirks.

“You can have one of those too, Fifi, but this will be for young people. With music and booze, well, not for you obviously, but for the rest of us, and just, please, let me do this.”

“Aren’t you the godfather to enough of Britain’s babies?” asks Matt, but he goes mostly ignored.

“Fiona, please?” Nick pleads, batting his eyes at her and she laughs and squeezes his hand.

“Of course. Make sure to invite loads of cool people so I can tell this baby Rita Ora bought her a pair of trainers or whatever.”

\---

She looks beautiful the day of, and she should, she and Nick had tried on everything at that maternity boutique, but it’s also because of how happy she looks.

Nick likes seeing his friends happy.

So he’s just leaning back against the cupboards in the kitchen, flicking through the pictures on his phone, reliving the moments like they didn’t only happen this afternoon. 

The formal mum-to-be part of the party ended hours ago but there’s still a full house under his roof. Music playing, punchbowl getting refilled with random bottles from behind the bar, laughs coming in bursts from all through the flat. It would be nice to capture the whole of it, not just the still photographs or Vine length videos, but how he feels when the place is crowded with people he loves. When Harry’s been home long enough that there’s weird foods on the counter and various articles of clothing lying strewn in every room. He pokes at something that might be a guava, as his other thumb slides through the camera roll.

He got some footage that he’d definitely get killed for putting on Instagram. Annie Mac trying to prop one of Harry’s ridiculous farmer hats on Fiona’s belly, the following video of Fiona getting hysterical and shrieking about how she’s going to wee. Gemma licking a melted Aeros out of a nappie. He doesn’t even want to think about what the internet would do with the picture of Harry with a balloon tucked under his jumper, making his fingers into a heart over the rise of it.

Nick’s staring at it, wanting to scoff at the ridiculously earnest face Harry is directing at the camera, but finding it impossible to do so, when he hears his name being shouted from the sitting room.

Tucking his phone into his back pocket without posting anything, he follows the voice to where Gellz and Henry are curled up on the sofa in such a way that it makes him horribly nostalgic after he’s confirmed he hasn’t actually time traveled. “Nick,” she draws his name out, clearly having enjoyed a number of cocktails, “wonderful, it’s about time! Did you at least bring snacks?”

“Do you see any snacks?” he waves his empty hands about in the air as Henry tries to poke a smile back onto her face with little to no results.

“You still owe me for the Roskilly’s!” she sulks. “Why do you always forget that?”

“Please, how many years ago was that now? I’ve paid off the ice cream debt like a hundred times over at least, Gellz.”

“I just really want some gelato.” She blinks up at him all sad eyes. “Why is there no gelato?”

“The shops are right down the road where they’ve always been,” Nick tells her, wishing the couch had another cushion he could flop onto.

“Henry, go get me some gelato.”

“I love you. Dearly, even. But there is not a fucking chance in hell.”

“Nick, will Harry go?”

He glances over to where Harry is talking with Fiona’s stomach in her special arm chair for the day and ignoring the other handful of girls gathered around. They might be Fiona’s cousins, he knows they were part of the familial swarm that were deemed hip enough to warrant an invite.

“Well, he’s the host now. Not exactly like he showed up empty handed.”

“Will you ask him? Please. For me.” She bats her eyelashes for a second before her face turns hard. “No. For that container of Clotted Cream Vanilla I was saving.”

“Oh, God, let it go!” he shouts, bee-lining for Harry even though he has no intentions of sending him out for desserts at this time of night in January. Especially when there’s still most of a perfectly good cake on his dining room table.

“What was that for? You’re upsetting the baby,” Harry says, like it’s a thing he could possibly know about. He smooths his hand in a tiny circle over Fiona’s belly button, which is apparently soothing the restless child inside enough to Harry’s liking. “It’s alright. Uncle Nick’s just loud, you’ll get used to him. I’m kind of surprised you’re not already.”

Nick ignores the way the girls all awww and titter even though, yes, he’s a sap and sometimes his boyfriend is obviously hands down the most adorable person on the planet. “Gillian wants gelato and has requested you fetch if because I finished a pint of hers a decade ago.”

“Oh, I’ll go then,” Harry says, always agreeable, already most likely tapping a good-bye in morse code to Fiona’s fetus.

Nick puts his hand on Harry’s shoulder, hoping that will keep him from standing up and indulging his former roommate. “She’s being ridiculous, don’t go and get her anything.”

Fiona adds, “And I hate to do this, but I’m going to pull the mummy card and ask you to stay because for the first time this month she’s not kicking me in the bladder.”

“Babies love him,” Nick says, fondly, tightening his grip on Harry for just a moment. “Even the unborn ones.”

“Are you two thinking about having one any time soon? You know, settling down? Tying the knot?” one of the cousins asks and Nick feels terrible and then even worse when he sees the look on Fiona’s face.

“Di,” she hisses followed by, “I’m sorry,” to Nick and Harry before turning her full hormonal fury back on her relative. “Are you drunk? You can’t just ask people things like that! Your mother would kill you if she were here. I might kill you!”

Diana at least has the decency to hang her head and Nick just tries to keep his face placid.

Which isn’t easy when Harry smiles, easily even, saying, “Nah, it’s okay. I mean, we’ve barely even been together a year, so, marriage and babies hasn’t really come up.”

Except Nick knows that it has. When he’d first told Harry about Fiona and when they’d wandered past that couple taking wedding photos in the park, and when Harry had come home from a meeting with management with a host of dates in the southern hemisphere that conveniently worked around his writing schedule but not the big birthday bash they’d been part of organizing for Nick’s mum.

But this is Harry keeping the peace. Not airing their dirty laundry with a forward stranger. So Nick makes his thumb stroke over Harry’s shoulder blade like it never stopped moving in the first place. Even though he’s thinking about dinners eaten in almost silence and mornings they’ve left for work only kissing a cheek instead of a mouth.

“I’m really mortified. I’m so sorry,” Diana says. “I should never drink tequila.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Nick says, he can’t help it, but forces a grin that he hopes isn’t too close to a grimace when Harry looks up at him. “Only joking.”

He thinks of the stupid picture on his phone again and puts out of his mind how his first thought had been it would make a really hilarious announcement.

\---

Not long after Diana put her foot in her mouth, Fiona had commented on how late it was and how tired she didn’t realize she was after a long day, and everyone had slowly filtered out the door.

“I thought that blanket from Sarah was really lovely,” Harry says, scraping the remains of a bowl of mango salsa into the bin.

“Mmhmm,” Nick just murmurs from by the sink, rinsing a platter that is already probably the cleanest thing in the flat.

“And I want to know where Jamila got those onesies from, they were amazing.”

Nick answers, “I think they were a custom job,” finally putting the tray to the side to dry even though it doesn’t leave him with much to do with his hands.

“I happen to like the pram we got best though,” Harry says, stroking his palm over Nick’s lower back in a way that makes him unusually tense up.

“Yep,” he answers, popping the ending sound, moving away from Harry’s touch towards a collection of glasses on the table.

“Alright, if you want to say something, say it,” Harry prods. “Because I know you have all sorts of shit stored up to comment on and I want to hear it. We’re not dragging this out.”

“I don’t want to say anything.”

Harry answers, “Yes you do!” with force behind it, but not anger. Not really.

But Nick is mad, and he can hear it in his voice when he starts speaking. “I don’t want to fight about this with you any more, yeah? Because, honestly? I don’t have time for screaming and nitpicking and stewing silently this week.” He sighs, like the fight really has gone all out of him. "I know where you stand right now and you know where I stand and that's it. They're different places and that's it."

"If I could..." Harry starts and Nick just looks at him sadly because Nick's the one who keeps making this a problem.

"Don't be mental and even suggest that we fight instead about how you should be capable of changing your feelings. I’m too tired for something that ridiculous.”

"And that busy week ahead and all," Harry teases and Nick tries to feel as light. But he puts on his serious face to say, "I do want to be with you, you know that, right?"

Nick pulls him in, close, Harry making himself small against Nick like he does when he's feeling needy and unsure. And Nick kisses his temple first, saying, "Course, I do," and then his mouth. And he wants this to be enough, just this, but he can't fully shake the greediness of always wanting more. 

He reminds himself that there was a time even this seemed out of reach and delusional and here he is, living it. He'd rather kiss Harry in their kitchen after picking up party rubbish than be alone. And he guesses he would rather do it than see rings on their fingers and a baby on the way.

And even if he doesn’t, he loves Harry enough to try it.

\---

It eats at him a little though, in the days ahead, if he's being honest. Or more accurately, if Matt brings it to his attention. "You're being very snippy with me this morning. "

"Oh, more than usual?" Nick answers, alright, pretty snippily. 

"Whatever you did, just apologize to Harry." Matt doesn't even look up from the paperwork he's shuffling through. 

"Why do you just automatically assume it's my fault?!"

He shrugs. "Am I wrong?"

"Yes! You are. You are very, very wrong."

Fincham keeps looking back and forth between two seemingly identical pieces of paper. "You can't honestly expect me to believe you're completely innocent, whatever we're talking about."

"It's not about guilty or innocent," Nick sighs. "It's just a thing."

And that's what gets Matt to actually stop revising the schedule for next week. "When is he leaving?"

"Soon. After his birthday." Nick still doesn't know what to buy him. They haven't even booked the trip to Greece that he gave him for Christmas.

"You're sure you don't want to apologize?" Matt prods. 

Nick doesn't want to go through the rules he has with Harry regarding apologies, all the things they have decided they shouldn't be sorry for. That Nick is older, that Harry has to travel, that they're not entirely on the same page about what a year from now might look like. "Since when is relationship therapist part of your job description?"

Matt answers him, "Since always?"so it's obviously his own fault when Nick throws a pen at him.

\---

Aimee sends a text right when he's getting ready to leave that both of the kids are sick and if Ian has to stay and record some song for tomorrow's broadcast, than he should come over and bring Paracetamol and wine.

_Paracetamol for you or the young ones?_

_Both. Either. Just come._

He walks down the hall towards the Live Lounge. "I'm going to go get some meds and help with your poorly children because I'm that good of a godfather, Ian. Any messages to pass along?"

"If you could tell her I'm getting out of here as quickly as I can?" Ian looks tired, but no more tired than he's looked since the twins arrived eight months ago. Just kind of like every day is a Monday after Glastonbury now. 

"You'll have a jingle about Prince Harry's impending nuptials done before I even make it to your front door, Papa Ian."

He plinks a few notes out on one of the keyboards. "Let's hope."

Nick takes the scarf Ann gave him for the holidays out of his bag but he hasn't even wrapped it around his neck once when Ian asks, "Shes sending you to the store? Aimee is?"

"Yeah, with a very short list," Nick specifies because he can see Ian reaching in his pocket for his wallet. "Just fever drops and alcohol."

"Get her some flowers. From me," he holds up three tenners. "Something yellow if they have them."

"Look at you being the good spouse," Nick teases even though he feels a flush of emotion that honestly could overwhelm him given the opportunity. 

"And, here, take my keys because if either of them is sleeping and you ring the bell, you're a dead man."

“Noted,” Nick answers, shoving it all into his bag, deciding if Tesco or Waitrose is the better place to hit.

\---

When he opens the door to the Chaloner household, Aimee is still in her pajamas, both a top and bottoms that appear to be Ian's, and she's got one squalling baby in her arms and the other crying in his pram. Aimee honestly looks like she's on the verge of a meltdown herself.

“You brought flowers? I have two sick infants and you bring fucking flowers over?”

“You should watch your mouth in front of these impressionable ears, Aimee, honestly. And they’re from your darling husband, I’ll have you know,” Nick answers, and the way her face softens and changes makes him remember being really young and stupid with her.

“Ian sent them?” she asks, all quiet and it’s ridiculous. She’s ridiculous for making him feel this ridiculous.

“Yes, my God, give me this baby, here,” he reaches for Kristin and doesn’t take any offense when she starts somehow crying even louder. “Put these in water and then do what you’d like. Shower, sleep. I’m here until Ian gets home.”

She asks, “Where’s Harry today?” still fussing over Simon and making no move to take advantage of his chivalry.

“I think at the studio.” He bounces Kristin on his hip a little, trying to remember if Ian had said she had sicked up on him this morning or that was her brother.

With a raise of her eyebrow, which is just as expressive even if she hasn’t filled it in this month probably for any reason. “You think? Shouldn’t you know where the guy you want to be your husband is?”

“Aimee,” he warns, and he swears if his boyfriend has been sending her texts...well, he’d be doing the exact same thing Nick’s been doing for ages.

“I have this motherly instinct now, it makes me want to take care of lost, stupid boys.”

It’s insulting how everyone thinks he and Harry are incapable of navigating their relationship on their own, even if it happens to be kind of true at the moment. “Go grab a kip and stop being rude. Honestly, you’re only getting away with it because you look so terrible.”

“Fuck you, Grimshaw,” she says, thankfully heading towards the bedroom. “They get another dose in an hour if they need it. Thermometer’s in the kitchen, directions, everything. Don’t kill my children.”

“Yep, wouldn’t dream of it.”

He texts Ian that he better get creative fast and sings the babies off-key Ke$ha songs until they become too worn down by him to even cry any more.

He feels competent and completely at a loss, somehow at the same time.

Because he’d do this, every day, the mess and the crying and the worrying, but he’d never want to do it alone.

If it was any other time, he’d send Harry a selfie with the two flushed faced infants resting on his chest, but he just takes the picture for himself and starts in on the chorus of “Your Love is My Drug” when Simon whimpers.

\---

When he gets home, Harry is in the kitchen hunched over a cutting board.

Nick’s sure he smells like artificial cherry medicine and baby formula, both of which were dribbled onto him in rather large quantities, but he still wraps his arms around Harry from behind. “How was your day?” he asks.

“The asparagus was on its way out, so I figured we’d eat that tonight?” he responds, not really answering the question, just slicing away at the ends of slightly limp vegetable.

“Yeah, sure,” Nick says, kissing the side of Harry’s neck before pulling away. “You want me to wash those peppers? Are they part of this dinner spread or were they just getting too chilly in the crisper?”

He tilts his eyeline so he can see Harry under his fringe, and there’s that little quirk to his lip that Nick knows shows up when he’s trying not to find Nick adorable. “I tell you one time while I’m drunk that I sometimes think fruit and veg have feelings.”

“Oh, Nick, I had to buy the yams, they looked so lonely,” he mocks, and now there’s no hiding it, Harry is definitely smiling. “But yeah, peppers? Gracing our tastebuds or just our table?”

“Sure, wash the peppers.” Harry’s voice has that fondness to it that he much prefers to the quiet, kid gloves dancing around a fight thing that’s been there lately. “And if you think you can handle boiling water, maybe make us some rice too.”

He says over the volume of the rushing faucet, “You know I survived just fine before you were living here.”

“Oh, that reminds me, you got another strongly worded letter in the post today from all the takeaway places in the city. Their profits are down thirty percent and they’re holding you responsible.” Harry sticks his tongue out like a child and Nick hates how endearing he finds it.

He hip checks him in retaliation for the feelings before reaching for a pot in one of the bottom cupboards. “I think what you’re saying is actually they’re holding you responsible. Better add them to the long list of charitable contributions you make annually.”

“How are the twins?” Harry asks, his tone shifting, and he knew Aimee was talking to him. The traitor. See if he changes any of her children’s nappies ever again.

Nick assures, “I was just helping her out,” and it bothers him how guilty he sounds. Like he was sneaking around on Harry instead of filling medicine droppers for babies.

“I know.” Harry finally stops slicing the asparagus, looking up for the first time since Nick came in the room and he doesn’t seem angry or hurt, but Nick’s skin is still crawling.

He wishes the rice wasn’t already out because looking for it would give him something to do. He’s extremely jealous that Harry can just reach for one of those peppers and start cutting it. “I should have called, or checked in, or something, I guess.”

“You know we don’t have to do stuff like that.”

They don’t. They never have. “I just...”

“Didn’t want it to be a thing,” Harry finishes for him, the knife making wet, slow movements in the background of the conversation, and yes, that’s kind of it exactly.

“What’s with everything being things recently?” Nick questions, shooting for light, but definitely missing the mark. “Because I’m frankly sick of it.”

“Yeah, it’s stupid isn’t it?”

Nick wants to joke about feelings, come up with some pun that Harry will post only the punchline to on Twitter, do something that will force this elephant in the room dissipate. But instead he says, “I thought if I told you I was there, with the babies, that you’d think I was trying to pressure you. To have the conversation again or I don’t know. Something. And I don’t want you to feel anything like that. From me, especially.”

“Thanks,” he breathes out first and then, “but they’re okay?”

“Yeah, they’ll be fine. Now our friend Aimee on the other hand...”

Harry reminds him, “Be nice,” in his typical saintly way. “She wants us to be happy.”

“Yeah, that’s what I want too.” Nick says it because it’s true. Because that is ultimately what’s most important here. And because he can’t stop thinking about the look on Aimee’s face when she heard the bouquet was from Ian.

Harry leans over, kissing Nick properly, even though they each have utensils in their hands. It’s warm, standing over the hob, but also from Harry’s mouth and Nick lets himself feel it. This kind of peaceful domesticity. The way his flat is a home now because he lives in it with Harry. How this is all a thing he’d be willing to fight for. That he should be fighting for it.

“You can listen to the show tomorrow, right? It’s not the day you’re at the driving range with Niall?” he asks before he’s really finished putting the thoughts together.

“Nah, we rescheduled, why?”

Nick rubs at Harry’s wrist. “Just listen to the show tomorrow. Promise me.”

“Okay.”

Nick’s voice goes steely, like he could pull a strop in just a moment. “Promise.”

“I promise,” Harry says with a little laugh, tweaking Nick’s ear with his free hand. “You’re being weird.”

“Always,” Nick answers. “Can you handle the rest while I make a phone call?” He’s already out the door basically and Harry sighs just loudly enough for him to hear.

“You have to show me all the baby pictures on your phone as penance.”

Nick shouts back, “Deal, easy deal,” dialing up Fincham and praying it doesn’t go to voicemail.

\---

“Let’s leave the dishes,” Nick says, reaching for Harry’s forearm as he goes to clear his plate. Dinner was light and easy and filled with smiles and smirks and wine and Nick feels better than he has in ages.

“Is that because you’re the one who’s going to be doing the washing up?” Harry says with a grin and he’s too much to look at head on sometimes. Nick has no idea how he does it.  
He states, plainly, “I just want to get you naked,” and the way that Harry laughs, yeah, that’s what he needs to happen. Nick rubs his thumb on the underside of Harry’s wrist, nudging the slew of bracelets he’s got on, and he remembers when this used to be the only way he was allowed to touch Harry. In some innocuous display that would still leave his mouth dry and his heart pounding.

But now, now he can do almost anything, and the warm, happy thrum he’s been feeling has nothing to do with the alcohol he’s had.

Harry responds, “Saucy tonight,” like he’s not necessarily on the same oversexed teenager page, but Nick can see the way the angle of his body changes. How if Nick touched his cheeks, they’d probably be just a little hotter than the rest of him. “I didn’t know stir fry was an aphrodisiac.”

“You’re a bloody aphrodisiac.”

He’s feeling a little drunk and a lot powerful and he wants to do all the things he never thought he’d get away with. Harry already looks fucked out, his lips pink and eyes lidded, and Nick doesn’t plan on shoving back his chair with enough force for it to hit the cupboards but that is exactly what happens.

It’s a loud noise, startling, but the shock that Harry is registering on his face has no element of fear behind it. Not while Nick presses him with the same kind of reckless abandon against the refrigerator. Not while there’s the following clatter of magnets and photographs and silly pieces of paper hitting the floor. And not in the few seconds Nick can last without kissing him.

But then Nick’s closing his eyes and Harry’s mouth relaxes underneath his and Nick knows they just ate identical meals, but dinner definitely tastes better on Harry’s tongue. Spicier and more fullbodied and lots of other stupid words he’s heard thrown around at wine tastings he had no business being at. It doesn’t really matter. Kissing Harry gets him trashed, his favorite fucking vintage, that’s all that matters.

And the heady, hot feeling that’s humming through his system has Nick down on his knees fast, Harry’s trackies and pants in his hands first, followed swiftly by Harry’s prick. He’s not fully hard yet as Nick gives him a tug, hoping to eke out a drop or two of precome before he starts to blow him, but knowing self control is not really an option right now.

“You’re like full mental. What has gotten into you?” 

Harry’s laughing and breathing a little heavier and the last thing Nick says before swallowing him down is, “I told you. You.” Harry hisses and gropes through Nick’s hair and there’s the same dull, hollow thunk of his skull ricocheting off the freezer door as when he was first sandwiched against it. Nick had no idea that was a sound that would go straight to his dick.

He wishes he had more hands because it’s impossible to touch Harry’s hips and his arse and his cock and his chest and all the parts of him Nick wants to run his fingers at the same time. He feels rushed and frantic and sloppy but Harry keeps making reassuring murmurs. Jerking past Nick’s lips every now and again like maybe he’s a little over eager as well.

If Matt hasn’t decided to kill him for the phone call, he’s definitely a dead man for how ragged he’s going to sound on air tomorrow. But that doesn’t matter right now as Nick stretches out his tongue and pushes Harry deeper towards his throat with every attempt.

He knows vaguely that he’s hard. That he’s still wearing his too snug jeans and that they’re edging more on the side of pain than comfort. But he’s more focused on how he wants Harry to come. How he wants to taste it and drink him in and drown in the knowledge that he’s the one who did that.

So he picks up the pace, changes the suction, and tongues at as much of Harry as he possibly can, and there it is, the stutter that Harry’s getting close. The change in his inhale and the grip of his palms and Nick breathes in the way he smells, figuring that’s the best chance he has of committing this moment to memory.

It only takes a few more seconds, the pressure of Harry snapping forward almost bringing tears to Nick’s eyes, but then he’s swallowing him down and it’s worth the loss of oxygen.

Harry’s knees are shaky as Nick stands up, his own legs feeling like rubber, and he thinks he means to kiss Harry, but he misjudges. His mouth lands more against Harry’s chin, the stubble burning his already sore lips, and with that scrape, it’s like the whole rest of his skin realizes how flushed he actually is.

“Fuck,” he spits out as Harry’s hand snakes between them, and the ache from his dick is suddenly the only thing he has any awareness of.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“If we’re doing this, than do it,” Nick pants out, trying to angle himself closer to Harry’s body and not caring at all that they’re both going to have to change in a matter of moments. When Harry laughs, it sounds gleeful and tired and Nick feels the rumbling where their ribcages are vibrating next to one another.

The angle isn’t great the way that Nick has him pinned, but there’s just enough friction and Harry’s an old pro at making the best of the impulsive situations Nick puts them in. Plus there’s way more room here than any of the club toilets they’ve been in. And that Nick is more desperate than he’s been in ages.

He ruts into Harry’s fist, reduced just to basic instincts, all of his nerve endings sparking. When he bites at Harry's collarbone, it’s maybe too hard, but he just needs to anchor himself. The taste of metal and sweat and that tip of the swallow's wing all mix on his tongue and as Harry mutters a curse, Nick comes with almost a punch to the gut.

He’s moaning, this inhuman kind of moan, but it feels so good. Harry makes him feel this good. And after that he just slumps against him, feeling wrung out and sticky and like he’s just run the best marathon of his life. He’s not entirely sure if the ragged breathing echoing around the kitchen and into his ears is him or Harry, but he keeps listening to it, waiting for it to mellow out.

“Is what I’m going to hear on the radio tomorrow you snoring?” Harry whispers, and Nick manages to choke out a laugh with the little air he’s carrying around in his lungs.

“You’ve got to listen and see.”

“Cause I promised.”

“Yeah, you did,” Nick comments while Harry kisses the side of his neck.

“But showers first.”

Nick nods into Harry’s shoulder. “Shower first,” he amends, not planning on letting Harry go.

\---

“Tina Daheley, thank you for that update on the state of the nation.” Nick pauses, filling the background with some of their typical music. “How many of these reports do you think you’ve done over the years, do you reckon?”

“Oh, don’t make me feel old!”

“No, but really, how are you supposed to celebrate your anniversaries if you haven’t been keeping track.”

He can almost picture her hand on her hip even though she’s in another studio. “So you’re telling me that you’ve kept track of all the links you’ve done.”

“Well, no. But I’m sure that falls under the job description of one of my producers. Finchy, how many links have I done?”

“Hundreds. Thousands even,” Matt answers, monotone and bored.

“Matty! You’re not keeping a running tally of the number of times I’ve gone out over the airwaves? How could we possibly celebrate when I hit a milestone this way? What if it’s my anniversary right now?”

“I thought your anniversary was next Wednesday,” Fiona says, exactly like they’d rehearsed.

Nick sighs like this all wasn’t part of his plan. “Not that anniversary. England, I apologize on her behalf for bringing up Harry Styles. We’d made it a whole...” he stops, like he’s checking the clock or a list or anything really, “forty minutes it looks like without talking about One Direction.”

Fiona asks him, “What are you doing to celebrate with your young popstar?” but she doesn’t finish before Matt interrupts her.

“Alright, we’re supposed to be playing some music this morning.”

“He’s right, I’m sorry,” Nick says. “We have an older selection for you if you’re just joining us. Have a little _Gaslight Anthem_ to help wake you up.” He hits the switch to turn the track on, and knows what they have queued up for right after this and apparently Twitter already does too from the feed going on behind Matt’s head.

“I can’t believe you made me pull this together last minute. I’m renegging on all the wedding promises you had me make,” Matt assures him.

“Oh shut it, you love love and you know it. So I fully expect there to be a white tiger there the day of.”

“Ridiculous,” Matt says, but he’s smiling.

After “Riptide” finishes up, there’s Ben Rector’s voice coming out of the deck and this is the most self indulgent thing Nick’s ever done on air, somehow, but it feels amazing. He refuses to check his phone or any of his social media. He just sits there and listens to the song that over a year ago Harry thought about him to, the lyrics perfect and hitting him in that way where it’s beautiful that someone you’ve never spoken to has put your feelings into music.

But he’s ready when Matt signals he’s turning his mic back on. “Now, I know some of our more dedicated listeners might have noticed something about those last few tracks. If you’re new to the Breakfast Show, welcome, and I’m sure any of our social media sites are currently filling up with comments about it. But, more importantly, Mr. Harry Styles, if you’re listening the way that you promised to today, you will be waiting for me at the first place we snogged and you can never say again that I haven’t surprised you. Am I allowed to say snog on the broadcast?”

“A little late now to be worried about that,” Matt chastises. “Why don’t you tell our listeners what they can hear from Fearne after 10 instead.”

“Absolutely,” Nick says, talking about who she has coming into the studio, feeling his phone vibrating non-stop against his thigh.

\---

He checks the message in the car, but only opens up Harry’s. _I think you’ve fully lost it at this point_ is there with one of the smiley faced emojis and he’s not wrong. There’s a lightness that’s settled into him since he decided to do this. Because the problem wasn’t fighting Harry or fighting other people’s expectations, the problem was that he’d been fighting himself.

And he’s not going to do that anymore.

The studio is obviously no further from home than any other day, but it feels like it takes ages to get there this morning. Like there’s more traffic on the roads and less speed on behalf of his driver. He wants to be there already, standing just outside his closet door, that first place he kissed Harry when it was still just a thing he’d done on a drunken whim. Because Harry was laughing so hard Nick honestly thought he might choke, and he’d smelled like every cologne Nick owned after trying them all on, because apparently it was taking Nick too long to choose another shirt, and then Nick was just kissing him and Harry was kissing him back.

They’d gone out to the rest of the party after, and Harry had returned to giggling with Alexa and Daisy, but Nick mostly just sat with his cocktail and thought about how his life had been split into a before and an after. Or really, he was too drunk to do that, even though it’s exactly what was happening.

But finally the car is pulling up to the kerb and Nick doesn’t care that there’s some paparazzi outside, as well as a number of fans with their cell phones going. He just smiles and waves and apologizes for not having time for a selfie. He’s not even going to stop to undress properly, just leaving a trail of his winter clothes on the way to the bedroom.

Harry’s dragged over one of the chairs in the room, so he’s in the exact spot as years ago, wearing a white t-shirt that isn’t the same one as at that party, but might as well be. He’s dangling a sock, driving Puppy mad and making her leap into the air, and Nick loves them. He loves his loud and silly life.

“I can’t believe you talked about us snogging on the radio,” Harry says, grinning at him like it’s the kind of pushing the envelope stunt that makes getting up in the morning worth it.

“Well, it’s not like I went into detail. Gotta save something for before the Christmas break and all.” He leans down to kiss Harry and ignores the way that Puppy nips at his ankles for interrupting his game.

“Big Boss Ben didn’t call you into his office, did he?”

“For what? Playing some old songs on the radio? Plus, he knows all your fans up our ratings.”

“They’re still tuning in to listen to you,” Harry says, always the supportive diplomat.

“Absolutely. But, I didn’t make you sit here staring at the rumpled bed to talk about my numbers.”

“Yeah, why am I sitting here?” Harry stretches his already so long legs to poke at Nick’s shins. “Did you get me something?”

Nick hasn’t, this idea coming together too quickly for him to buy anything, which is the only part of this that has had him anxious. Until the full reality of what he’s about to do hits, and there’s a full rush of nervous energy surging through him.

“There’s no gift, or at least not a thing to unwrap. I still have a thing, for you. Well, it’s not a thing you can touch, but it still qualifies as a thing, I’m pretty sure.” And Harry’s looking at him like he’s again wondering just how mental his boyfriend really is, and Nick can’t blame him. It feels like he’s noticeably vibrating. “Alright, let me start over with the part of this I sort of planned out in my head, yeah? Okay.” He takes a breath, centering himself as much as he can right now. “I realized, finally, I know, so slow on the uptake, ha ha, you don’t have to say it, but I realized just how much you put yourself out there and on the line a year ago. And it’s about time for me to do that too.” Nick takes a shaky inhale and goes down on his knee in front of Harry, no turning back even though he can see the way his eyes have stretched much too wide. “So, Harry Styles, I would really like to know if you’d like to get married, you know, one of these days. When there’s a weekend we haven't already filled on the calendar.”

“Why are you asking?” Harry questions and Nick talks even though it feels like his chest is collapsing.

“Because I love you. Because I know you’ve brushed this off every time the conversation’s come up, but I have to ask. And you can say no. You can always say no, I understand that, but I’m going to keep asking if you do because I want this so much and it’s time that I fight for you like I would anything else. I love you and I want to marry you.”

“I’m leaving in like a month!” Harry practically keens, a pitch that reminds Nick of frustration points being hit, but he feels calmer himself than he has in ages. He’s asked, there’s no more anxiety about what will happen if he does.

Nick smiles, reaching for Harry’s hand. “Well, we just won’t do it a month from now. I’m flexible on the details, just not the rest of it.”

“What’s it going to change?” Harry asks, his gaze steely. “If we get married, what’s the difference going to be?”

He’s asked this question before, and it usually just sets Nick off into a strop for absolutely no reason, but he’s not letting it shake him this time. “Everything? Nothing? What are you more scared of? Tell me.” Nick tugs at his wrist and Harry slides off the chair to join him on the floor, wrapping his legs up Indian style, and Nick uses it as an opportunity to get himself into a more comfortable position as well. It feels better, being on the same level as him. Like he’s a little bit less of a twat for doing this.

His tone is pitched low, almost a whisper, but there’s no shakiness to Harry’s voice as he tugs the sock through his hands, not making eye contact. “That it’s not going to work. That it’s only going to get harder and you’re going to get sick of what my life makes our life be. I don’t want us to end up hating each other.”

“How could you think I’d ever hate you?” Nick asks, and he’s as scared as he’s ever been, but he makes himself be confident. He wants this and he’s not going to let Harry’s insecurity stop him.

“Because I’m always leaving! There’s always some place I’m supposed to be and I can’t be in your heart and thousands of miles away!”

“Sure you can,” Nick touches Harry’s chin, forcing the eye contact. “Already done it more than once.”

Harry glances away, for a moment, like he doesn’t believe him. “But what if it’s not just you? What if we have kids, Nick? And I’m off all the time and you’re shouldering the whole burden of raising them? And you resent me for that, or I resent you for not having to leave them? Or they resent both of us for shuttling them all over the place? I don’t want to live like that.”

He wants to kiss Harry so badly, a bit of comfort, but he doesn’t want Harry to think he’s doing it to be distracting. “I don’t want to live like that either. We’ll make it work. People make it work. And just like I’m not asking you to get married next month, I’m not asking to have kids then either.”

“But you want them. You know you do,” Harry says, almost a petulant accusation.

“Yes, I’ve always wanted kids. But I want you more than that. And if you told me you really couldn’t commit to it, we wouldn’t. I want it to be me and you. That’s what I’m asking for today.”

“It’s always been me and you,” is what Harry says, plainly, and Nick can’t help it, he’s got to kiss him. He pulls him in by the back of his neck, his hair dense and soft, and Harry kisses him back, just like that night in 2012. Just like many, many nights since then. 

But he’s also the one who pulls away. “You really want to marry me?”

“I really want to marry you.” He touches Harry’s finger, where he could wear a ring that meant something and not just I like to put on my whole jewelry box in the name of accessorizing.

Harry smirks at him, and Nick feels like he’s already crossed the finish line but not fully processed that he won. “And not just for the party?”

“Shockingly, no,” Nick says, meaning it.

“Ask me again,” Harry requests, all smiles, and Nick feels like he’s actually going to strain something from grinning so hard.

“Do you want to marry me?” he asks, voice cracking and tears welling up, because he’s celebrating the answer without even having heard it yet.

Harry tells him, “Yes. Yes, I really do,” voice wet and then muffled into Nick’s shoulder because he has to touch him and hold him and love him.

And now he's going to get to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately between parts 2 and 3 of this we "found out" about Puppy, but I felt like I'd already included her, and so she now has to stay.


	4. heart like a rocket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Without the telly, the flat is quiet and Nick doesn’t let himself think that a baby would change all that._

**4\. heart like a rocket**

“You’re sure you don’t want to go for dinner?” Harry asks, even though Nick is clearly already down to his pants and in the middle of a disc’s worth of _Simpson_ episodes. Or maybe it’s not clear to Harry how many Nick’s already watched and has left, but he still doesn’t want to deal with going out.

“Let’s just order in,” he says, because he’s already had to do drinks with the crew after work and talk to both his parents on the phone and he’s just...so fucking tired.

And even though he’s been tired since June, facing his first day of being 35 feels heavier and different and he hates that he comes home like this to Harry.

Out in the world he’s all smiles and conversation and he thinks pulling off that ‘nothing has changed’ attitude, but it’s exhausting and he can’t do it all the time. And sometimes he thinks the worst part of this situation is that Harry’s stuck with the real him, the one who sulks and slams the cupboard doors and gets all puffy faced after a cry. He loves Harry the most, differently and more than he ever has anyone else, and yet if anyone was to look at them over the past two months, Nick’s not sure that would come across at all.

He reaches out and rubs his fingers along the back of Harry’s hand. “I’m sorry I’m not much in the mood for celebrating.”

Harry sniffs, because his hay fever has been bad lately, today especially even though it drizzled first thing this morning. “S’alright. You’ll have other birthdays I imagine.”

Nick does this kind of scoff and sigh that is the closest thing to a laugh he does these days. “Not in the ground yet, Haz, cheers.”

“I’ll get Greek, I think tonight, yeah? Birthday boy okay with Greek?”

“Sounds splendid,” Nick says, still idly tracing the smooth metal of Harry’s wedding band until he pulls his hand away to catch a sneeze into his palm. “Bless you.”

“Thanks,” he answers, reaching for the box of tissues on the side table. “And Daisy said she’s stopping by with a cake.”

“Haz,” Nick whines out.

“We ran into each other today and there’s no stopping her. Ring her if you think you can get her to change her mind, but I think you already know how that’s going to end. And, hey," Harry nudges at his shoulder. "Maybe skip this episode,” he then suggests in that kid gloves tone Nick hates.

He’d been watching Homer join The Stonecutters but he’d forgotten that the episode right after it is “Maggie Makes Three” and, “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

Harry gets that look on his face like there are eight thousand things he’d like to say but he’s not entirely sure how to start with any of them. Nick thinks he hates it more than the kid gloves tone. “Greek food, you said?”

“Yeah, and cake.”

Cake because it’s Nick’s birthday and Daisy’s a splendid dessert chef on top of being one of his best friends and the fact that she doesn’t know eight weeks ago their surrogate took a pregnancy test that came up negative.

Nick’s only told Aimee because of all the times that he stood by while she peed on sticks over the years. He doesn’t think she’s told Ian, even though when he made her promise that, he’d have understood if she didn’t follow through. But Ian doesn’t look at him any differently. Doesn’t squeeze his neck during a hug the way Aimee does.

Harry sneezes again on the way to to kitchen and Nick yells after him to take an allergy tablet and turns off where Marge is making everyone have an hour of family time.

Without the telly, the flat is quiet and Nick doesn’t let himself think that a baby would change all that.

\---

“What was the place that you and Ian went? After your breakdown at Christmas, not with the children.”

“It wasn’t a breakdown,” Aimee says and Nick can still hear where her cigarette exhale would fit into the conversation even though she hasn’t smoked in years. “And hello to you too.”

“I heard about the sprouts sailing through the dining room.” Ian had sent pictures too, it was really rather impressive.

“You’ve also heard about Kristin’s ant farm getting dumped in my vegetables at her brother’s suggestion.”

With a nostalgic lilt to his voice, he says, “I can’t believe they still sell ant farms.”

“I can’t believe you bought my children each ant farms.”

“I have to make sure they keep selling them!” Nick exclaims, because who knows how long at this rate it might be before he has his own kid to buy an ant farm for. “Anyway, not the point. The place the two of you went?”

“Somewhere in Prague, Grim, I don’t know the name offhand.” She sounds distracted and exactly like Eileen did on the phone when he was a child. “I’m a little busy.”

“Could you find out? Like maybe before Harry comes back from meeting with Sheeran this afternoon? You know, if you’re not doing anything else.”

She slams something down on the other side of the line. “Did you not hear me say I’m a little busy? Is this part of being a mother or is my voice just changing pitch as I get older because I fucking swear no one is listening.”

Nick gets sheepish and tugs on the neckline of his tee. “Sorry, you’re right, you did. I’ll just google.” He stops scrolling through pictures of beaches and goes back to the main search page.

Aimee sighs. “It’s not your fault that Simon has somehow not heard me constantly asking him not to draw dinosaurs on his bedroom walls.”

“Let the boy draw dinosaurs, you only live once.”

There’s some muttering under her breath he doesn’t catch, but then she asks, “Why do you want to go to Prague?” in the tone of voice that he easily recognizes as her trying not to kill him even though he’s being annoying.

“I need to do something extra nice for Harry. And you told me you blew Ian twice a day for the whole weekend you were away.”

“Why do you think you have to do something nice for him?” she asks, her voice softening.

Nick plays with his hair and considers making an appointment to get a trim. “I haven’t been the best husband lately and he deserves the best husband, don’t you think?”

When she says, “Oh, Grim,” he feels her fingers along his temple instead of his own, this comforting he guesses muscle memory thing from his past. Most recently he’s watched her do it for Kristin while she was carsick on their way to the beach and he’d thought about how he was going to do things like that soon.

Because it was before the test results, when Nick in his mind was still taking his child to their first day at primary, and planning out what their family Christmas card would look like and everything felt scary but so incredibly optimistic. 

He wanted this, and Harry wanted it, and Nick never really thought about it not happening on the first try. They were going to have a baby. 

And then they weren’t.

“I don’t think Harry expects a trip,” Aimee reminds him, cutting through Nick’s thoughts about the Yonce onesie he had already ordered off the internet that’s currently shoved in the back of the guest bedroom’s closet. “Or anything really.”

“But I’ve been so sad and stroppy and miserable! I wouldn’t want to spend my evenings with me.”

“Well, I mean, Harry did take that bullet for all of us.”

He says, “Rude, Aims,” with the normal amount of fond indignancy behind it and it feels beautifully typical for a moment.

“You’re going through something. A big something. Like, it would be insane if you weren’t upset about it.”

“Why am I so much more upset about it than him, though?” Nick asks the question out loud that’s been plaguing him since Harry’s smile came back even though his didn’t.

“No, you’re not going to start with that shit. You know Harry was devastated and just because he’s a little less demanding about getting whatever he wants when he wants it does not mean he doesn’t care.”

And Nick does know that and is probably never going to forget the way Harry’s face fell when the agency contacted them. “Alright. You’re right. Go back to your dinosaur washing up.”

“Call me next time before you’re ready to book a weekend getaway and convinced Harry hates you and the idea of fatherhood.”

“I never said he hated the idea of fatherhood.”

“Well, I would hope not, you’re going ahead with it again.” Nick makes an affirmative noise, because they are, but he’s just asked to be left out of all the initial details. “And before you even start with it, it will happen when it’s meant to happen.”

Nick makes himself close his laptop where it’s open on the counter. “We should do brunch soon. Let Ian clean up the ants and dino art.”

“And give Harry a break of you.”

“You’re a bitch, never mind. Ian and I will have a laddy outing instead.”

“I love you, Nick.”

“Love you too, Aimee,” he assures her.

\---

When Harry comes home from his session, Nick makes sure that he’s not on the couch and he’s done his hair up again and is wearing the Burberry shirt that Harry got him for Christmas. There’s a random playlist on the iHome, but when Harry opens the door, he walks into Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” and Nick doing a stupid dance over pouring a drink.

“You really turn me on,” Nick sings terribly, waggling his eyebrows at Harry, who he’s happy to see is laughing while he drops his keys.

Harry of course jumps in to effortlessly serenade Nick with the next line, like the smug and talented popstar he is. “You knock me off of my feet now,” but kisses him instead of saying the word baby. Which is fine, even though Nick feels like maybe he wouldn’t crumble to dust hearing it come out of Harry’s mouth. “What’s all this about then?”

Nick shrugs, but presses his body into Harry’s a little bit more. “Just felt like a change.” He kisses Harry again as the lyrics remind him his lonely days are gone.

“Were you day drinking?” he asks, looking at the bottles of vodka and tonic on the counter. “Or did Daisy make edibles again?” Because, well, the last few times Nick’s drank there’s been a lot less dancing and smiling and a lot more crying into their duvet.

“I’m entirely sober,” Nick boasts before correcting himself with, “Well, mostly sober. Definitely not drunk though. What can I get you?” 

“What you’re having.”

Nick hip checks Harry while getting another glass from the cupboard. “Before I pour this, how much medication have you taken today?”

“None,” Harry tells him, chewing on a breadstick they apparently still had tucked away by the fruit bowl.

“None?” Because Harry looks down right healthy and normally the walk from parking the car to inside the house will at least get his eyes a little red rimmed this time of year.

He sighs. “Alright, I’ve probably had as many antihistamines as you’ve had alcohol.”

“Well then you’re having juice on the rocks,” Nick tells him, going for the Apricot Nectarine in the door of the refrigerator instead of the Grey Goose.

“Hey, not fair.”

“Oh hush, I’ll join you.” He pours two glasses of the juice, leaving his other drink next to the sink. “Want to hear about your day. How many hits did you and Ed pen?”

Harry dangles the breadstick in his mouth like a tremendously oversized cigarette. “Maybe two,” he says around it.

“So humble. Maybe two.”

“You asked,” Harry says, shrugging. “If he can change his schedule for next week, we’ll have three, easy.”

Shaking his head, Nick lets him know, “I’m going to fight playing any of them on the radio.”

“Please, you know you’ll be asking for the exclusive and singing clips on Vine in the studio and praising every note.”

Nick reaches for the breadsticks since Harry’s going to apparently continually insist on drawing attention to his mouth with them. “Well, yeah, if I want to keep myself in this nice house. I’m not stupid.” He crunches down on one of them and makes a face. “Who bought olive twists?”

“They’re good!”

“Now I’m concerned whether you can judge the quality of something or not. Are the songs actually rubbish? Should I be concerned about our mortgage?”

Harry smirks. “Like we have a mortgage.” He comes over and bites at Nick’s shoulder, teeth and the curve of a smile pressing into the thin fabric of Nick’s shirt.

“Maybe modest needs to not just be the name of your management group.” 

Harry muffles a laugh and sinks his mouth a little bit further.

\---

Hours later, there’s the remains of a frozen pizza, half a roll of paper towels and basically all of Harry’s clothes piled on the coffee table.

“We should eat more pizza. Why are we constantly pretending like the freezer isn’t filled with pizza?” Harry asks, twirling a piece of crust over where he’s resting against Nick’s chest.

“Because I’m not supposed to have dairy and you lived in LA for too long.”

“I really did.” He sighs then, twisting his neck so his hair tickles at where Nick always hopes his abs will look better. “Nick, are you really happy?”

“Right now? Yeah.”

“You’re not just pretending for me, right? Because I don’t want you to do that.”

Nick rolls his eyes and tries to remember where he left the remote so he can turn the volume up and stop listening to this nonsense. “Harry.”

“No, if you’re sad, I want you to be sad.” He sits up and stares at Nick seriously in a way that makes Nick have to look away before he finishes.. “For as long as it takes, I want you to feel it.”

The remote’s probably somewhere in the mess in front of them, he’s going to have to be careful they don’t toss it in the bin later, so Nick’s forced to just play with his bracelets instead. “That’s not fair to you. The way I’ve been has not been fair to you.”

Harry’s quiet with what he says next. “It’s kind of like they died, isn’t it?” and then Nick has to look at him, even though he already knows that Harry’s going to have tears in his eyes and he hates seeing it. “Like, they never really existed, I get that, but that was going to be our baby. And now they’re not.”

Nick nods because that’s exactly what it’s like but he doesn’t want to say it out loud. He’s tried to pretend that this was just some of his jizz in a cup and a slight delay in writing a date down on the calendar, but it’s so much more than that. It’s their fucking kid who’s never going to be. 

He pulls Harry in so their foreheads touch and he can get his arms around him and makes himself find his voice. “I’m still sad, but I can be happy too,” Nick tells him. “When I’m with you, I can be happy.”

Wetly, Harry says, “I want to give you everything. Everything you could ever want, I want to be the one to give it to you.”

And then Nick kisses him. Because Harry really already has.

He keeps kissing him. For a long time. Long enough that the dog has to interrupt them to be let out.

When Nick comes back in from the garden, Harry’s straightened the living room and turned off the tele. He’s put the iHome back on, but it’s not the same playlist of Nick’s any more, instead one of the less discordant songs by the band from Montreal they went to see in the spring.

“We’re going out tomorrow,” Nick tells him. “Want to take you somewhere nice.”

“Good, I’m tired of washing your dishes,” Harry says, until Nick kisses him again.

\---

“I went round the studio and they said you’d come home early, so I better be seeing you spread out waiting for me on that bed…” Nick yells, bounding up the stairs, taking them almost two at a time, shedding his shirt and a scarf along the way, until he actually reaches the door to the bedroom. Because Harry isn’t so much spread out waiting for him as he is curled up on himself in the dark.

Nick immediately drops the volume of his voice. “Oh no, love, you alright?”

Harry sits up and tries to smile but Nick can read the disorientation all over his face even though the room isn’t bright. “Yeah, just resting.”

“You’re poorly.”

“No, no, ‘m fine. Just hayfever.” He sniffs then, like he’s emphasizing the point. “We have plans!”

“I know I told you that you will always be the most fit person to me, but you look really fucking terrible right now,” Nick says, pushing Harry’s hair back off his clammy forehead. “Headache?”

“Yeah.”

He clucks over him, voice going even quieter “Why didn’t you take something?”

“Because then you wouldn’t let me drink!”

Nick tells him, “Oh my God, you’re ridiculous,” as Harry sneezes twice into his elbow. “I seriously can’t believe you sometimes.”

“Leave it.” He goes to get out of the bed. “I’ll change and we can go.”

“You’re staying right here, taking some Benadryl, and it’s not a discussion.”

“But I hate the Benadryl!” Harry pouts. “I’m just going to go all loopy and weird and then pass out.”

“So be it.”

Harry whines, which only makes him all the more pitiful. “What about our plans?”

“Because if we don’t go out tonight, we will never be able to again. Benadryl,” Nick repeats, firmly.

“Come to the kitchen and get it with me,” Harry demands, lip lowered and everything.

“You’re such a brat, this is why I need you to take care of yourself.”

Reminding him, “Got you to take care of me,” Harry follows Nick downstairs with shuffling feet.

“Oh My God, Hazza, honestly.” Nick comes around the corner into the kitchen and notices there’s a bouquet of flowers out on the table in what he thinks is supposed to be a pitcher instead of a vase. “Where the fuck did these come from?”

“I picked ‘em out myself.”

“Are you out of your mind? You’re going to be miserable for days! Why did you do this?”

“Read the card,” Harry says, sniffling while pulling out his phone.

“Read the card? Your throat is going to close up within the hour most likely!”

“Please read the card then before I die.”

Nick reaches for the little envelope which has his name on the front in a handwriting that isn’t Harry’s. He breaks the seal as Harry stifles a cough, not wanting to disrupt the video he’s apparently filming of this. “See you in May?” Nick reads, glancing at Harry with what he’s sure is a perplexed expression. “Are you going on tour again?”

“Lilies are May’s birth flower.” Harry says, his eyes two puffy messes over the case of the phone. Nick can’t see his mouth, but he knows that he’s smiling.

Nick does some quick counting in his head, and has to ask, “It took?” all breathless because he couldn’t bear it if he’s not putting these puzzle pieces together correctly.

“Congratulations, Daddy,” Harry says, and Nick’s knocking the phone to the side and kissing Harry all over his face, and they’re both honest to God laughing in a way Nick didn’t realize he missed so much.

“You knew. You knew this whole time.”

“I did,” Harry nods.

“And you didn’t say anything.”

“That was the deal. You’d asked me not too. And plus this way, got to do a nice little surprise. Think that’s…” he crinkles his nose before sneezing. “Fun.”

“Alright, that’s enough, I’m throwing the lilies in the garden and we’ll celebrate.”

“I think that shirt Henry sent over the other day for dinner. Is it still in your car?” Harry calls out to him as Nick chucks the lilies onto the closest chair by the door.

“Oh, by celebrate I meant Benadryl for you and listening to your list of baby names get weirder and weirder until you fall asleep and start drooling on yourself.”

“I’ve never drooled!”

“I’ll take a picture this time. To remind you.”

Harry pouts, saying, “And I don’t think Nightingale is THAT weird.”

“Maybe I don’t want to actually have children with you,” Nick jokes, opening up the cupboard he thinks he last saw some medicine in.

“No, you do. You really, really do.” Harry has on that grin, that one that Nick loves, the one their kid is probably going to see as soon as Harry gets his eyes on them.

“Yeah, guess you’re right." Nick thinks while he holds a bottle of hopefully not expired antihistamines about ant farms and scribblings on the walls and cleaning sick out of car seats and it never being quiet again. Doing it all with Harry . "Think I want it quite a lot.”


End file.
